What Challenges Students face in Group Assignments?

Coordination costs:  

Represent time and energy that group work consumes that individual work does not, including the time it takes to coordinate schedules, arrange meetings, meet, correspond, make decisions collectively, integrate the contributions of group members, etc. The time spent on each of these tasks may not be great, but together they are significant.

Coordination costs can’t be eliminated, nor should they be: after all, coordinating the efforts of multiple team members is an important skill. 

However, if coordination costs are excessive or are not factored into the structure of group assignments, groups tend to miss deadlines, their work is poorly integrated, motivation suffers, and creativity declines.

Motivation costs:  

Refers to the adverse effect on student motivation of working in groups, which often involves one or more of these phenomena:

• Free riding occurs when one or more group members leave most or all of the work to a few, more diligent, members. Free riding – if not addressed proactively – tends to erode the long-term motivation of hard-working students.
• Social loafing describes the tendency of group members to exert less effort than they can or should because of the reduced sense of accountability (think of how many people don’t bother to vote, figuring that someone else will do it.) Social loafing lowers group productivity.
•  Conflict within groups can erode morale and cause members to withdraw. It can be subtle or pronounced, and can (but isn’t always) the cause and result of free riding. Conflict – if not effectively addressed – can leave group members with a deeply jaundiced view of teams.

Intellectual costs: 

Refer to characteristics of group behavior that can reduce creativity and productivity. These include:

• Groupthink: the tendency of groups to conform to a perceived majority view.
• Escalation of commitment: the tendency of groups to become more committed to their plans and strategies – even ineffective ones – over time.
• Transparency illusion: the tendency of group members to believe their thoughts, attitudes and reasons are more obvious to others than is actually the case.
• Common information effect: the tendency of groups to focus on information all members share and ignore unique information, however relevant.

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