Part 2 - Anticipated Problems with Group Work

Here are the specific Questions. Click on these to go directly to the Question and the Answer.

1. Can I cover the required course content if I use class time for group work?
2. Will costs related to free-riders outweigh the benefits of group work?
3. Will students be motivated to prepare for group work?
4. Can I resolve interpersonal conflicts that will inevitably arise among group members?

Part 2 - Anticipated Problems with Group Work

Question #1 Can I cover the required course content if I use class time for group work?

The greatest fear of most instructors is that if they use class time for group work, they will not be able to cover enough content. For the most part, this fear is based on the observation that, even in the face of threats such as pop quizzes, only a small minority of students even try to prepare for class and even fewer come to class actually well prepared. The fact that students rarely appear to be prepared for lecture-based classes, I contend, results from a powerful combination of disincentives for completing pre-class reading assignments and a lack of positive incentives for students to reveal what they know when they are prepared.

Most students have learned that, as long as they attend and pay attention, they will either be able to do well on the tests based on the lectures alone or they will be adequately warned if additional reading is really necessary. As a result, such things as the costs of buying the text, using discretionary time to read it, and then being bored during the lectures, end up being powerful disincentives for pre-class preparation. Further, when students do prepare, they are often reluctant to speak up for two reasons. One is that, if they are wrong, they worry about looking bad. The other is that, even if they are right, many worry that they might be seen as "one-upping" their peers.

Team-based learning, however, provides multiple incentives for pre-class individual study and for students to speak up when they do have information to share. One strong incentive is that the individual Readiness Assessment Test (RAT) scores have an impact on their grade. In addition, because teams cannot do well unless their members are prepared, interaction during the team RATs provides several other powerful incentives for both pre-class preparation and for sharing information within teams. Students learn quickly that their peers will hold them accountable for pre-class reading because, every time a disagreement occurs, members will be asked about the reasons for their choices. As a result, there is both immediate social pressure to study and the realization that failing to do so is likely to result in the negative consequence of receiving a low peer evaluation at the end of the term. In addition, over time, members are increasingly motivated to study to ensure the success of their team.

Given this combination of factors, the vast majority of team learning users have found that, because students are willing to take responsibility for completing pre-class work, they are actually able to cover more material. In addition, the efficiency of the Readiness Assurance Process allows them to shift the primary focus of in-class work from covering content to decision-based team assignments that focus on developing higher-level thinking skills.

Question #2 Will costs related to free-riders outweigh the benefits of group work?

Faculty members who ask this question tend to have one of two situations in mind. By far the most troublesome is when one or two members end up being saddled with doing far more than their fair share of the group work. This type of free-rider problem is almost always the result of poorly-designed group assignments that can be (and usually are) completed by individual members working alone. Because one member doing a poor job can "sink" the group, better students don't trust others to do the work to their satisfaction and will do a disproportionate share and then resent (and complain about) having to do it.

Based on our experience, free-riding based on parceling out assignments to group members occurs when either of two conditions exists: 1) assignments involving tasks that can be completed by an individual member (i.e., group interaction is in fact not needed), or 2) assignments involving a great deal of writing. Because writing is inherently an individual activity, the only real group activity will be deciding how to divide up the work.

For a variety of reasons, this kind of free-riding is virtually never a problem with team-based learning. One is that the RATs so powerfully illustrate the value of give-and-take discussion in tackling intellectual problems (e.g., over 98% of the teams will outperform their own best member. Another is the multiple incentives for completing pre-class assignments. The most important reason, however, is that application-focused assignments provide both incentives and opportunities for face-to-face interaction because they are designed around reaching decisions (not producing a lengthy document) and are largely conducted during class time.

The other problem that many instructors view as free riding is when students get higher grades than their individual scores would seem to merit. In most cases, this results from using a traditional grading scale (i.e., 90% = A, 80% = B, etc.) when a significant part of the grade is based on team work. Since the teams do such good work (average team RAT scores are typically at least 15-20% above average individual scores), a low-scoring member of a high-performing team can end up with a relatively high grade. The best way to avert free-riders of this type is to make sure that the mechanics of the grading system take into account the fact that group scores will normally be higher than individual scores (see grading system discussion below).

Question #3 Will students be motivated to prepare for group work?

This concern typically results from a combination of instructors' lack of faith in students to complete pre-class assignments and the frequency with which they have to deal with complaints about free-riders. What the teachers lack, however, is an understanding of how much their own failure to create conditions that foster individual and group accountability has contributed to the problem.

With team-based learning, a combination of factors, many of which are listed in the answers to the two previous questions, encourage members to be individually prepared for class. Further, because group performance is a major component of the course grade, students are motivated to prepare for and participate fully in the team assignments. They realize that team members will "sink or swim together."

Question #4 Can I resolve interpersonal conflicts that will inevitably arise among group members?

This concern also typically results from a lack of understanding of the tremendous negative impact of poorly-designed group assignments. Most of the really troublesome cases of conflicts in learning groups are associated with assignments in which students are able to parcel out the sub-tasks of the assignment. In some instances, the conflict is over either which member gets to make the decisions as to who does what or who gets the easiest (or hardest) part. In other cases, the conflict arises when members are impatient with members' failure to agree on and/or meet deadlines. Occasionally, the conflicts are content-based and result from differences of opinion about the quality of each other's work.

With team-based learning, lots of disagreements occur, but neither process nor content issues are significant problems because of the frequent and immediate feedback on team work. For example, although each RAT provides multiple opportunities for both process and content conflicts to occur, disagreements of both types are quickly resolved by feedback resulting from the scoring of the exams. As a result, team learning instructors almost never have to spend front-end time coaching groups on to how to resolve conflicts or mid-course time adjudicating problems that arise from group melt-downs.