Collaborating online
Group work can often be a source of dread for students. Uncertainty can surround how your group will work together, whether your grade will be influenced by your group members, the clarity of task instructions and, in the current situation, the physical distance between group members.
You will be pleased to know that you are not alone in these worries. Group work has been a source of friction between learners and instructors for as long as it has been used. With the possibility of working from different timezones with limited access to technology and the internet, online group work has never been so challenging.
Let’s take a look at a few approaches that can help you get the most out of your group work activities.
Don’t be afraid to lead
Someone needs to make the first move to connect the group and facilitate the first meeting and subsequent meetups. Setting aside time that you can devote to the group work will help things run smoothly. You can use online tools to identify times when the group is available, for example using a doodle poll.
Once you have found a suitable time for all your group members to meet, you can create group calendar invites through tools such as youcanbookme.
Review the task as a team
One of your first activities as a group should be to review the task instructions in detail. Reading them out loud to the group will help make sure everyone is on the same page and to identify any challenges or points that need clarifying.
If there are follow-up questions for your instructor, nominate someone to take this responsibility on. If graded, prioritise the elements of the task that have been allocated a greater grading percentage.
Once you are happy with the task instructions and have a plan to resolve any queries. You can divide up the work and set responsibilities. Try to do so in a way that plays to your group members strengths and likes. This won’t necessarily be easy, but try to identify the different tasks required and allow group members to nominate themselves against tasks to help everyone feel involved in setting the responsibilities.
Allocate everyone to review and proofread at the end of the task to be sure everyone has a clear understanding of the final output and have the opportunity to make suggestions for improvements before the final submission.
Keep on track
Check your task instructions to see if you are required to undertake touchpoints or check-ins with your instructor. You can use these to map out key outcomes or progress points you can aim to achieve as a group.
Before finishing your meetups, be sure to try and identify a time for the next meeting. Finish your meetings by repeating any actions or responsibilities that have been taken on by group members.
Once you have your key dates clear, you might like to focus your daily or weekly activities using a task list. Using an online shared task list can be a great way to easily highlight each group member's individual tasks. There are a number of online tools which make creating and managing tasklists easy. Online providers include:
- Todoist - a simple to do list-best used for individual to-do lists (not shared)
- Wunderlist - a simple shared to-do list tool
- Trello - a simple multi-list tool that allows you to create lists for different tasks and projects.
Use online collaborative tools
There are a wide range of online collaborative tools you can use to support your group work. You may already have access to online collaborative documents such as Google drive/docs or Office365 applications.
Google docs and Word365 allow you and your group to work both synchronously and asynchronously on the same document in one shared space. Here, your group can edit, comment and contribute during your meetups or at a time to suit each member.
You may have a more visual group task which might require a collaborative tool which can easily support the sharing of multimedia items such as images and videos.
Padlet is a great tool for sharing visual media and can be used for online collaboration projects, presentations and showcases. You can also use Padlet to brainstorm, take notes and collate ideas for your final project.
Finally
Despite the challenges of group work activities, there is great value and a sense of achievement in a well-completed group project. The task will offer vital experience of collaborative working which is essential in the workplace.
Even if you have a great deal of work experience, the challenges represented by the current situation offers the opportunity to hone new team working skills through the use of digital collaboration tools.