Contextual Background:
Three assessments within the MSc Applied Psychology in Fashion course are based on teamwork. Reflecting professional academic practices (e.g., academic conferences), one assessment concerns a group presentation of a scientific poster and two assessments concern group presentations on a set of PowerPoint slides.
Evaluation:
This year, students had the opportunity to get into groups of their own choice on all three occasions – they were instructed to form groups based on one’s project of interest. However, upon instructions to form groups themselves, three things were evident: 1) students often formed groups based on friendship, regardless of preference for certain projects (thus, extra-academic factors played a large role, potentially negating academic goals of the assessment); 2) the groups were sometimes based on certain cultural/academic backgrounds (thus, there was little diversity within each group); and 3) the less academically motivated students were left behind and so there were formed as a separate group. By students wishing to not leave their ‘comfort zones’, the student assessment risked not being in alignment with the assessment purposes. Furthermore, students ended up working with those whom they were familiar with, and so were given fewer opportunities to challenge themselves for growth. Furthermore, the group that was last formed were at an academic disadvantage from the onset. Thus these factors may have a negative impact on the students’ overall learning experience.
Moving forwards
I draw upon the empirical literature by McClelland (2012) and Malekigorji (2019), who both studied the impact of randomly allocated group membership in student learning contexts. While both studies have their methodological shortcomings (e.g., both studies did not have a control condition of non-randomised group membership), the general consensus was the following: while students may initially be reluctant to leave their comfort zone of friend circles, randomised group allocation was beneficial to the students’ overall critical, reflective, and teamworking skills. Conversely, the implication is that students not leaving their comfort zone may be detrimental to their learning experience. The following is a quote from McClelland (2019, p. 351):
“Once students leave the comfort zone, competencies that have been dormant surface and they are able to utilise and acquire a wider range of skills. Leaving the comfort zone also results in the creation of a critical incident, which can assist the student in developing their reflective capabilities. The results suggest that randomly allocated groups enhance both an individual’s task capabilities and their teamwork capabilities.”
The advancement of a student’s teamwork capability is especially important because it is a major transferable skill the partaking student can take out from the course to apply in contexts beyond the assessment. Taking these benefits into consideration, I agreed with the course team a few weeks ago to implement random group allocation for all three group assessments from next year.
That said, it is also the reality that students learn best when they have self-efficacy or the sense that things are in control (Gibbs, 2014). In this sense, while we may encourage across the course for randomly allocated group membership for teamwork situations, we must instil flexibility, to ensure that certain student stressors caused by the random allocation may be attenuated. I will continue to closely monitor the execution, consequences, and the by-products of the change, all the while continuing to support the students.
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References
Gibbs, G., 2014. Maximising student learning gain. In A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (pp. 215-230). Routledge.
Malekigorji, M., 2019. The effect of continued team randomization on student’s perception and performance in a blended team-based teaching approach. Education Sciences, 9(2), p.102.
McClelland, G.P., 2012. The influence of randomly allocated group membership when developing student task work and team work capabilities. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 36(3), pp.351-369.