Contextual Background
Group course work is recognised as having value in developing students’ skills relevant to employment. These include team-working; collaboration and organisational and personal time management. (UCL, 2019). Assessing group projects is challenging (Forsell et al, 2021). Last year I experienced the challege of trying to assess individual contribution of students versus the group’s work as a whole for the first time.
Evaluation
‘Group think’ (UNSW, 2025), was evident among students. This played out in a strange way. Students presented divergent thinking, but they wanted to avoid jettisoning anyone’s idea. This was in the name of inclusivity. The final project thus risked incoherence. But it also reflected the fact that the assessment criteria were in tension with each other. For example, between process and result.
It was tricky to understand why some contributed more than others within the group. I felt aware of my potential biases as a teacher in assessing this. This included gender differences, and language skill. It also related to the ability for students to do work outside of the lesson in their spare time. But also some were ambivalent about the project from the beginning.
Moving forwards
In future I would sask for more clarification from course leaders about assessment (e.g. assessing process, versus result). Also how much the activity of doing the group work aligns with the learning outcomes. e.g. Are we actually assessing the “soft skills” of working effectively in groups? “If so, explicitly include them in the assessment criteria and reward their development in the grading.” (UNSW, 2025).
I would also want to review the nature and complexity of the task/brief being set within the time frame. This is particularly important if there is an implicit expectation that students are needing to meet and work as a group outside of class. This can jeapordise inclusivity and fairness, for example if students are juggling their studies with a job. A resulting solution might be that group work could be a simpler task and a smaller element of the overall unit mark,
Provide more guidance for students on the reasons for group work. Provide opportunities to discuss the assessment criteria further too. I could use the guidance provided by UNSW as a model. This model also suggests that students create a sort of ‘contract’ at the start of the project. In my case study, students had created one based on shared values. But in future I could suggest it include agreement on division of labour and roles within the team.
Being aware of observed gender differences in behaviour within group work. Scholars have percieved a tendency towards ‘social loafing’ in men (Tosuntaş, 2020). At the same time, being mindful that this may be an ‘effect’ of another dynamics within the group as well. These might include group size, and investment in the project. Experimenting with smaller group sizes could be helpful. (Challenging when the class itself is very large).
Accept a certain amount of difficulty with these group project scenarios. That they reflect something of what Orr and Shreeve (2018) describe as the ‘stickiness’ of an arts curriculum. That the formative is as important as the summative in these feedback scenarios. Accepting this myself might help to also moderate student anxiety around the ambiguities involved in these kind of projects.
References
Forsell, J., Frykedal, K. F., Chiriac, E. H., Hui, S. K. F. (2021), ‘Teachers’ perceived challenges in group work assessment’, Cogent Education (2021), 8: 1886474. doi: 10.1080/2331186X.2021.1886474
Orr, S. and Shreeve, A. (2018). Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, Values and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum, Abingdon: Routledge
UCL Arena Centre (2019). Assessing group work (2019). Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/publications/2019/aug/assessing-group-work (Accessed: 14 March 2025]
University of New South Wales (2025). Assessing group work, Available at: https://www.teaching.unsw.edu.au/assessing-group-work (Accessed: 14 March 2025)
University of New South Wales (2025), Student Guide to working in Groups. Available at: https://www.teaching.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/upload-files/student_working_in_groups.pdf (Accessed: 14 March 2025)
Tosuntaş, Ş. B. (2020). ‘Diffusion of responsibility in group work: Social loafing,’ Journal of Pedagogical Research, (2020). 4(3), pp. 344-358. doi: 10.33902/JPR.2020465073