Andrew T. Hill*
University of Delaware

Group work can often be fun and challenging, but what happens when your group gets out of control? How can you get everyone to pull his or her own weight? Here are some suggestions on how to make group learning a better experience.

1. Be willing to work with different people than you would socialize with. Working with friends can often lead to unpleasant situations that decrease the amount you learn and cost you your friendships. If you work with friends, you are more likely to talk about issues unrelated to the problem for class. Socializing when you should be working on the course work is also more likely with your friends than with others. Friends are more likely to put all of the work on one person rather than everybody working together to come to the solution. See working with new and different people as an opportunity to make new friends and expand your horizons.

2. When you first start to work in your group, lay down some ground rules. Tell each other what you expect from each member of the group. You should actually write down some bylaws that state those mutual expectations and how you will deal with any instances where someone does not meet those expectations.

3. Set a schedule for any meetings outside class and make sure that everyone sticks to it. Have a mutually agreed upon plan for what you are going to accomplish during your meetings and how you are going to manage your time together as a group.

4. Appoint group members to take care of different jobs during the meeting. These officers should change from time to time so that everyone has a chance to do the different jobs. These jobs may include being the spokesperson for the group, the recorder/secretary, the timekeeper, and the "task master" (a member of the group who keeps everyone else focused on the work at hand).

5. If you are given an end-of-course evaluation, be honest about how other students performed in the group. Did some people in the group fail to fulfill their obligations? Be certain to reveal that in any written evaluation of the group experience.

6. If your group work involves a group presentation, make certain that all members of the group participate. Members of the group who are stronger public speakers should encourage and mentor weaker public speakers on how best to make the presentation. Avoid reading to the audience and be sure to maintain good posture and diction while speaking.

7. Avoid breaking any group problem up into pieces that are then done by individuals and simply put together at the end to be turned in as a paper, web site, or presentation. Instead, assign small tasks (i.e., searching the web for a resource, typing some data into the computer, creating a graph, etc.) to individuals, but come back together frequently to make decisions, draw conclusions, and keep everybody in the process. The final paper, presentation, or web site should be a cohesive package that clearly shows that you worked together as a group.

* Much of this article is derived from the presentations and discussions of fellows at the summer 1999 session of the Institute for Transforming Undergraduate Education (ITUE) at the University of Delaware. Opinions expressed in this article are solely the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the ITUE or the University of Delaware.