Developing group work skills online

Organisation and communication cover a range of professional micro-skills that subject coordinators want students to demonstrate. Tutorial activities and online resources can be used to explain and develop these skills as well as planning and development of group assessment product. (Activity 1 - Form groups of 4 (PDF, 1325 KB))

Explaining expectations of students allows them to perform as required:

Give explicit instructions for online behavioural expectations (“netiquette”):

• Example discussion board expectations (DOCX, 17 KB)
• Example email protocol (PDF, 240 KB)
• Teacher protocols: Using Collaborate
• Student netiquette: Using Collaborate (PDF, 529 KB)
• Give students tools: Group contract and group action plan (DOCX, 16 KB)

Use Stage 1 and 2 E-tivities on LearnJCU discussions to develop organisation and communication:

Description of the 5 stages of online community development with examples of e-tivities

Suggest (but do not mandate) to students that they upload profile pictures of themselves to facilitate personal connection in discussion boards

Asynchronous collaboration in LearnJCU:

• Discussion boards
  • Are for whole cohort discussion on a set topic and are the best vehicle for e-tivities
  • Student LearnJCU help guide: using discussion boards
• Group discussion boards
  • Are visible to members of groups and the moderator
  • Student Blackboard help guide: using group discussions
• Class conversations
  • Are available to the entire cohort and are linked to a specific item in the subject site eg an Ultra document
  • Student LearnJCU help guide: using class conversations
• Group class conversations
  • Are visible to members of assessment groups and are linked to a specific assessment item eg assessment dropbox
  • Student LearnJCU help guide: using group conversations
• Also dropbox, Facebook email but records of participation are harder to share with lecturers

Synchronous communication

• Collaborate rooms
  • Are available to students in assessment groups. Collaborate rooms can be set up using group conversations.
  • Teacher Blackboard help guide: setting up group conversations
• Google docs
  • Can be used to write documents synchronously, these can be shared with staff using staff gmail addresses.
  • Staff can see revision history of documents to monitor relative contribution by students.
• OneDrive
  • Can allow students to have secure shared documents to avoid version control issues, however live documents cannot be shared with staff due to the different O365 tenancies.
  • Documents can be downloaded and uploaded to LearnJCU
  • O365: Email, One Drive and Office

Additional resources to support student group work including a group action plan and tips and tools for online meetings for students.

Get to know your online learning communication tools

• Archee, R., Gurney, M., & Mohan, T. (2013). Communicating as professionals (3rd ed.). Cengage.
• Hoppe, M., and Hoppe, M. (2006)  Active Listening: Improve your ability to listen and lead. Centre for creative leadership.
• How to make group work collaborative in online courses: four strategies

Some assessment tasks require evidence of equal or equitable contributions from students in the group, for example, oral presentations may require each student to present a section, whereas other assessment products may not articulate contributions from each student.  Planning tools can assist the students to achieve equitable contributions, regardless of whether the product has identified student contributions.

Planning can reduce conflict between group members.

Explaining expectations of students allows them to perform as required:

• Group contract (DOCX, 16 KB) provides Subject Coordinator’s explicit expectations regarding contribution (Maybury’s two laws - Being ethical and responsible (PDF, 1144 KB))
• Group action plan (DOCX, 16 KB) allow students to set expectations collaboratively in assessment groups
• Assessment description can state how equity of students’ contributions will be assessed to promote students’ individual accountability
• Group contribution summary
• Records of participation
• Brainstorming with Crawford’s Slip Method can mitigate the tendency of confident contributors to dominate group interactions
• Self-awareness and identification of strengths and ways of working
  • Utilise strengths and weaknesses (PDF, 1393 KB)
  • Online team role identification tool
• ‘How do you work?’ tool (Which one are you? Tutorial activity (PDF, 1355 KB))

Alternatively, group work can result in partial or completely individual assessment.  Assessment tasks can require collaborative process and yet maintain identifiably individual contributions which are then assessed.  In this example, peer-to-peer learning is used in a multi-staged assessment task with individual contributions.  The stages comprise an initial position statement, response to group members’ position statement and reflection.

Assessment task via discussion board

• Hasson, G. (2017). Emotional intelligence pocketbook: little exercises for an intuitive life. Capstone.

Leadership and self-management development activities include:

• Description of examples and contrast with non-examples for interpersonal behavioural styles (Archer & Hughes 2010)
• Modelling of analysis of exemplars, scenarios of mixed communication or behavioural styles
• Reflective prompts to develop self-awareness and social intelligence (Hasson, 2017)
• Role establishment can provide structure to assist students in working effectively by utilising personal strengths: List of group roles and functions (adapted from Benne and Sheats (1948)
• Awareness and management of communication style can assist with relationship management
• See “Dialling down heightened emotions” in (Hasson, 2017)
• Negotiation and conflict resolution (excellent student conflict support modules for tertiary students).

• Bunting, M. (2016) The mindful leader: 7 practices for transforming your organisation, your leadership and your life. Wiley
• Lewis, S. (2016). Positive psychology and change: how leadership, collaboration and appreciative inquiry create transformational results. Wiley Blackwell
• Archer, A. And Hughes, (2010).  Explicit Instruction: effective and efficient teaching. Guildford Press (see non-examples and active participation)
• Hasson, G. (2017). Emotional intelligence pocketbook: little exercises for an intuitive life. John Wiley and Sons, Incorporated
• Archee, R., Gurney, M., & Mohan, T. (2013). Communicating as professionals (3rd ed.). Cengage.

Both giving and receiving feedback are nuanced and learned skills that require explicit instruction and many opportunities for development.

Subject coordinators can provide scaffolding such as:

• Feedback banks to use in peer assessments
• Clear instructions on the type and scope of feedback required for peer assessments
• Modelling provision of feedback in context
• Role playing opportunities with scenarios involving difficult conversations
• Activities to develop giving and receiving feedback can include analysis and reworking of destructive, inaccurate or inconsiderate feedback, examples can be found in TV shows, YouTube videos
• Reflection of previous difficult conversations, see Hasson (2017) for reflection prompts.

• Giving and receiving feedback Boud (1994) provides concise and considered advice that can be adapted to many contexts
• Hasson, G. (2017). Managing criticism in Emotional Intelligence pocketbook: little exercises for an intuitive life. John Wiley and Sons, Incorporated.

• Brown, R. E. (2001).The process of community-building in distance learning classes. Internet High Educ.;5(2),18–35.
• Lilley, K. (2014). Educating global citizens: Translating the idea into university organisational practice.
• Chen, J. (2012). 50 Digital team-building games.John Wiley & Sons
• Scannell, E. and Newstrom, J. (1997). The Big Book of Virtual Teambuilding Games. McGraw-Hill Education
• Garrison, D.R. and Arbaugh, J.B. (2007). Researching the community of inquiry framework: Review, issues, and future directions. Internet High Educ. (10),157–72.
• Rickards, T. and Moger, S. (2000). Creative Leadership Processes in Project Team Development: An Alternative to Tuckman’s Stage Model. Br J Manag. (11),273–83.
• Tuckman B. (1965) Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychol Bull 63(6):384–99.
• Shuman, L., Besterfield-Sacre, M. and McGourtey, J.  (2005) The ABET "Professional skills" - Can they taught? Can they be assessed?