For students who are motivated and determined to do well, group work is an exercise in frustration and unfairness. They do all or most of the work.
Yet the grade is shared.
And although they would love to say, “No, I’m not doing it all this time,” they know in the end that it will only cause their own grade to suffer.
So they buck up and do it.
They swallow their resentment and shoulder the responsibility to organize, create, and develop ideas and then do the actual work of writing, building, presenting, etc.
If you believe in keeping the healthy pressure of responsibility on all students, then you’ll take no part in the charade. Y0u’ll take no part in hitching high-achieving students to those who view group work as a way to skate by.
The students all know this. They’re far more aware of the sham of group work than their teachers, who either have their heads in the sand or know better but choose not to do anything about it.
If you doubt this, pull any one of your students aside before or after class and ask them. If they’re comfortable with you, they’ll let you have it. And it’ll be worse than you imagined.
So what should you do about it?
Limit its use.
Group work is overrated. Yes, there is a place for it. Students should have some consistent exposure working with others. But the level to which it’s relied on, and how it’s carried out in most classrooms, is a waste of time.
Individual skills in reading, writing, and math should far and away be the priority. Throwing students below grade level into time-eating groups where they contribute almost nothing makes little sense.
It’s merely time spent away from what they really need.
So check the box minimally required by your curriculum standards and leave it at that. Have students meet for five minutes a day instead of 40. Or better yet, have them meet once a week.
Put guardrails up.
There are things you can do to keep the weight of responsibility on every student while they’re working in groups. Although I’m happy to share a complete list in a future article, here are two of the easiest:
1. Make it a discussion.
Have your students meet in groups to discuss the progress of their individual projects. They can share problems and obstacles and help each other out, which has legitimate value. The actual work, however, is done on their own.
2. Assign roles.
Give each student a clear role or part in a group project they’re solely responsible for and graded on but doesn’t require the finished work of any other member. They then present just their portion.
Don’t give a group grade.
Give grades based on the individual work that is produced. Although counterintuitive, this tact produces far better and higher quality than giving every student the same group grade.
It’s also fair and will never cause resentment.
I know that some teachers lump everyone’s grade together to raise the average of poorer students, but all this does is hide the truth and damage the very students they believe they’re helping. A hybrid individual/group grade is likewise a bad idea.
If you do have to provide a mark for how well they work in groups, then create a rubric that reflects these soft skills—like staying on-task, listening to others, actively participating, etc.—and check them off according to your observations.
Question Everything
We have this habit in education of doing things just because we’ve always done them or because it makes sense on the surface.
Dig a little deeper and much of it just isn’t very good.
Group work is a perfect example, at least the way it’s most commonly used. Yet, this giant time-waster is trotted out year after year to the misery of a few dedicated students and the giggling irresponsibility of others.
We trust the knowledge of professional development trainers and other district-approved experts, assuming they know best. But they’re just parroting what they’ve been told.
Few are original thinkers willing to question the status quo and fewer still test the effectiveness of their grandiloquence in an actual classroom.
Great teachers and administrators are skeptical.
They question and test everything to determine what really works. They don’t buy into the unfairness is fairness routine. They don’t assume that group work, rotation centers, open-ended math, or community circles, for example, have any benefit whatsoever without deep thought and experimentation.
They analyze the level of captivation each lesson or learning method has on students and the quality of the product produced. They adjust every detail and perfect over time until they get it right.
Then they figure out a way to do it even better.
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Hi Micheal,
I could not agree more with this article. Thank you for posting this!
Yours in education,
Mathieu
I love all the articles of this website. I’m new to teaching after having worked in various industries for 12 years.
I teach high school science and I’ve had a lot of success with group projects. Yes, sometimes I do see the negatives that are mentioned in this article, but I also see success in other areas.
If you are a high school student and do not know how to interact with a parent or small group, then you will have major issues in a company or industry environment.
High School group work teaches students collaboration. It teaches them communication. It teaches them to know how to divide tasks and be accountable.
I let students choose their partner. In MOST cases, students gravitate towards another of similar level. I do not typically see one student “stealing” from the high achiever.
In some cases, I will give an option “solo or 1 partner”. Then some students will go solo if they want to do their own work and muster all the responsibility.
I teach at a top notch public high school so maybe my experience is unique and not the typical.
Great answer, especially on the final aim of collaborative work which all businesses are doing.
The teacher should simply do ability groups instead. Not to say groups are bad, but if badly done anything becomes bad. Fast learners must be grouped alone and get extra work if they finish too early. The slow learners should be grouped alone so that tale their time to assimilate concepts. At the end all the learners will achieve the learning outcomes through social constructivism.
The article explains how group work is not conducive to students learning to fairly divide tasks and be accountable, even if that is the intention. I have taught in both top notch schools and the complete opposite and I would agree that your experience is unique and not typical. Group work in top notch schools is heaven compared to pulling teeth in other schools. However, it also depends on the type of group work and the reward. It is easier to get students working together when the rewards are extrinsic. But this does little for intrinsic motivation when group work for academic purposes comes around.
Very much agree, and appreciate the tips on how to make group work beneficial. My own kids have always come home complaining they have to do all or the majority of the work (even in high school) but they do it anyway as they care about their grades.
I liked this quote, “ Individual skills in reading, writing, and math should far and away be the priority”
I so agree with you! A question: I’m starting to think rotating “station” work is ineffective, too. At least the way I do it. Are there any modifications or tweaks to center work that allow students to have some autonomy, but also to learn the correct answers?
It’s so hard to accustom students to thinking for themselves and valuing their own work instead of looking to see what their friends are doing. This is even harder when they are in a group. Plus a lot of time is wasted when they (try to) work in groups. For these reasons I’ve never been a fan of group work. It’s nice to hear someone stand up and take a stand against it.
Excellent post today. This was me as an elementary student; I did most of the work and was resentful of the group grade.
Amen, amen, and amen! I always hated group work, because I was one of the high achievers. The ONLY time it worked for me was a time in grad school when I worked with…another high achiever!
As a parent, group work was frustrating. In middle school where you don’t really know the other parents, I’m relying on my son to contact somebody outside of school hours to work on the project. One kid was moving and didn’t have access to a computer so my son just went ahead and did extra to get it done. Another kid was a perfectionist and always turned in work late because he could never consider it good enough to turn in. That was excruciating waiting on him.
Exactly!
Mike
Can’t agree more, groupwork adds little to no value to the students who don’t do the work.
I used it in my Math class for four years until I found a way to allow the students share the total marks I awarded based on how much work is put in.
Saw the hack somewhere on YouTube.
After total mark is awarded, I allow the group to meet and decide how much in percent each person gets based on how much work is put in.
It works when the students are already informed that final mark will be awarded that way. Usually, the most active member of the group is allowed to judge.
This might work for some. It worked for me.
When a teacher prepares students for group work and facilitates it effectively, group work is a powerful tool to help students accelerate learning, remain engaged, accomplish more ambitious projects as well as learn important collaboration skills. If one or two students are doing all the work, then the group has not been taught the pre-requisite skills to engage in effective group work. Almost all real world tasks require collaboration: discussion, negotiation, teaching, and navigating conflict and contribution. Having these skills is critical to success. So if you find that one or two students are doing all the work, you’re not facilitating the group work well, and should use a collaboration rubric that rewards students for teaching each other rather than just doing the work. Roles and modeling are also important. All learning is ultimately collaborative, so let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I used to preach the info in this article but changed my mind in the past seven years. In the real world, most people need to work with others and the skills need to be practiced.
To prevent what Michael is concerned about, I do all group projects in class only, assign participation rubrics that are checked weekly and circulate throughout the room constantly during group time. The kids know I’m checking. I also try to incorporate an artistic element which helps the weaker kids shine.
Thank you so much for so eloquently writing what I was thinking. My students enjoy group work as it gives them an opportunity to discuss the literature they read and learn from the insights of their classmates. After all I believe it was Vgotsky who said the best kind of learning takes place during social interactions. During my eleven years in the classroom I have found this to be true. Just an opinion of course!
I generally agree. The class I have trouble with is an Intro to Engineering for 9th grade. Giving individual rather than group grades is simply easier said than done. I’ve even tried having the groups allocate their scores but it didn’t work. They won’t throw each other under the bus. This is an issue I think of every year but haven’t really found a good answer.
I agree with so much of your work, but on this topic I think there is room for discussion. I have be apart of many meetings with employers (I am a retired teacher/principal 43 years) and one thing that comes out more and more is inability to work together, we need to teach them how to function better in the group
I know too many adults who are unable to work with others. These skills need to be trained and practiced.
Hi!
I agree that what is said in the article is true, but especially in subjects as Math, where you need each student to learn the skill that will help them work in the next one. But I also believe that, group work depending on the task, can help, especially when learning something new where high achievers can work with low achievers to reach the goal assigned. In this case the maximum of a group will be 3.
I teach science and due to lack of supplies am often forced to do group labs, but I feel that the more assertive students get to do all the fun hands on stuff and the shyer ones lose out. Whenever possible I try to do pairs or even single person. It is amazing to watch the quiet child light up with excitement when they get to do the actual experiment and not just watch another student do the work. It is lots more work preparing materials, but so much better for the students.
Oh my goodness!!! Thank you for letting me know I’m not the only one!!!
You need to put same type of kids together, same academic level and similar personalities. Putting a high achiever with a low achiever is never going to work, and guess what, everyone KNOWS who is smart, and who should decide.
But if you put kids with very similar grades, and kids with similar personalities you can get some very good work.
However, this cannot be everyday, the only way you teach.
I’m a huge fan of Kagan for cooperative learning. But even then, in my Kagan training, they showed us that traditional groupwork is far worse than individual work as far as learning. Instead, like you said, it needs more guardrails and structure — and you need an individual assignment to check understanding afterwards!
I always hated group work as a student because I was often grouped with low achievers who refused to help. Now, this happens to my daughter. In a group project this year, my daughter was purposely put in a group of kids who were avoidant of work. She of course, did most of it. In another group, one of the boys told them at the beginning he would not participate or contribute. She and the others had no choice, but to do his part. They were not allowed to “complain” about their group members to the teacher.
I agree with those who say the students need to work on these skills. They are in for trouble in the workplace if they don’t. But the students must be held accountable individually to avoid these problems.
I find groups work better when they get to choose who to work with. In my opinion, grouping the high achievers with the low ones, does not work. When they work with their friends, they are more motivated. They can still be graded as group, but evaluating each other, privately, on participation and contribution as part of the grade can be helpful. It allows them to be heard without tattling, and adds that individual accountability.
I usually agree with Michael – but here I’m left wondering: how can we skip the pitfalls of group work but still somehow give over the skill of working as teams, dealing with frustrating colleagues and communication? I know that most adults find that one of the hardest parts of life, and I know that the earlier we let our kids learn to be easygoing, flexible, a good teammate, a communicator etc, the easier their lives will be!
So – to the SCM community – any ideas?
How can we still incorporate those chances for our students?