Helping Students Learn Effectively in a Group Project

Group projects present great challenges to university students, particularly those in their first year of study. In an investigation into university students' learning difficulties (Ho, Chan, Sun and Yan, 2003), it is found that students encounter difficulties both in terms of handling a major academic problem on their own and in terms of working effectively collaboratively in a team. Learning effectively in group projects requires skills of two nature - one is planning and managing a problem solving process and the other is working effectively in a team.

In attempting to assist students to learn effectively in group projects, the Learning to Learn Project has developed a student workbook "Working Your Way through a Group Project". In conjunction with this student workbook, a Teacher Guide has also been developed where you will find examples of simple activities making use of the materials offered by the workbook in different scenarios, including:

  • Including the workbook in the project brief
  • Briefing students on the group project
  • Supervision during the project
  • Presentation of the project
  • Debriefing students after the project

Handling and managing a problem solving process
In a project, students not only have to deal with solving an academic problem, at the same time they face the chore of organising and managing a big task.

'The most difficult is the project because I didn't have to do projects in the past ¡K In the projects we have to take care of everything from the very beginning, the lecturers will simply put in it a sentence or two. They want you to think by yourselves, they don't want to tell you every single step. Therefore, you need a lot of initiative.'

The above quotation from the study, although short, allows us to diagnose in what way students are handicapped: they are threatened by having to 'take care of everything'; they seem to be at a lost of where to start and how to start 'from the very beginning' and to find it demanding that they have to work out 'every single step'; they feel rather helpless given that instruction from the lecturer is only in 'a sentence or two'; and 'a lot of initiative' happens to be a real challenge for them.

This suggests that in order for students to successfully complete the academic task of the project they need to command, in addition to cognitive problem solving abilities, a range of skills for task planning, management and monitoring. Such skills could include analysing the problem, searching for references, evaluating alternative approaches to solution, time management, work flow management, quality review and management, etc. Unfortunately, university students generally have no prior exposure to the concept and practice of such skills. As a matter of fact, they are expected to develop such skills in the process of doing their project - which could be seen as a learning objective for projects.

The implication of this for helping students learn to learn is that assistance should be provided to guide students through the planning and management of the project, and to facilitate them in making use of the process to build up and internalise these new skills.

Working effectively in a team
In a group project, students need to exercise many different skills such as problem solving, team work skills, leadership, project management, of which most of them have very limited or no experience to.

'With group project, if you get some problematic people, it's tough.' 'You talk about 4 or 5 hours with nothing coming out.' 'The system of collective responsibility turns out to be nobody's responsibility.' (Department E)


Working Your Way through a Group Project
This workbook is designed to assist students to learn effectively in group projects. Students are advised to carry the workbook to their group meetings such that they can refer to it for advice anytime, anywhere when they are working on their project. There are four sections in the workbook:

Section 1: "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQs)
This section offers quick tips on common problems encountered in doing group projects.

Section 2: "Working in a Group"
This section helps students to develop the essential teamwork skills including: building a team, communication, making group decisions, handling disagreement and leadership. For each topic, useful advice for achieving better performance are provided through the items of a self-evaluation checklist. By working through the checklist and reviewing their own answers, students will become aware of where and how to improve.

Section 3: "Working on a Project"
This section recommends to students, through interactive activities, useful methods and tools for planning and managing a project. Self-evaluation checklists on both group and individual performances are included. By working through the checklists and reviewing their own answers, students will become aware of where and how to improve in terms of group work skills and project planning and management.

Section 4: "Presentation"
This section provides students with practical guides on structuring the content of a presentation, preparing presentation materials and delivering a presentation. Again, self-evaluation checklists are available for reviewing performance.

The student workbook 'Working Your Way through a Group Project' is now available both in print version and on web.