Describe your previous collaborative experiences. Did you find them beneficial? What did you learn? What challenges did you face? Would you do anything differently the next time you collaborate?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Students often complain about group work, including those projects for which they earned a single group grade. Some students typically do less than their share of the work while others assume the burden. Students find it challenging to schedule group meetings and tend to meet fairly infrequently, at times only weeks before the project is due. Students are unsure about how to divide group work up in an equitable and productive manner, how to facilitate group meetings, and how to put the final project together, among other things.

This discussion question asks them to consider these past experiences in order to learn from them. Instead of perpetuating these types of collaborative experiences, students should discuss their frustrations and

successes so that they can pose possible solutions. A central goal of this discussion is to get students to realize that they can be agents of change, that "bad groups" aren't inevitable.