Group projects can be frustrating. But they are often used to assess students and are argued to be good preparation for professional work. In this article, we discuss what can be so annoying about group projects and suggest some interventions to improve the lives of those affected by them.
Group projects can be frustrating. But they are often used to assess students and are argued to be good preparation for professional work. In this article, we discuss what can be so annoying about group projects and suggest some interventions to improve the lives of those affected by them.
Photo by Marvin Meyer
As university students, we have been through a lot of group work. We could not be happier when our group is well-organized and efficient, leading to a product that is worthy of an excellent grade. High-quality, shared work helps us all learn, and in professional settings, satisfaction with colleagues has been linked to higher life satisfaction through higher work satisfaction (Kersebohm et al., 2017). Yet group projects can become a challenge in the negative sense, when barely one or two groupmates respond in the group chat and time is running out. Most often in these cases the entire group project falls into the hands of few students who still harbour some ambition for a higher grade (external motivation), or are just genuinely interested in the project (internal motivation). While it is tempting to attribute this disbalance to one student being motivated and another simply being lazy, research shows there are a lot more processes going on behind the scenes of a poorly distributed group project.
How is a Group Project Defined?
A university group project often involves individuals that are both task and outcome interdependent, meaning that they need each other not only to produce the final product but will also be graded based on that final product. While it should be acknowledged that there are a large amount of factors that influence team performance, such as leadership, informational diversity, and personality, in this article, we will mostly focus on cooperation and coordinating tasks.
In group work, it is expected that the pooling of resources and information of multiple team members and division of the tasks would yield not only a good final product but would also help students learn from each other. Alongside that, it is also expected that students’ teamwork skills would improve, such as communication, leadership, coordination, and distribution of group roles. However, this is not always the case – motivation and coordination losses are a real threat to team outcome (Nijstad, 2009).
Ringelmann Effect & Social Loafing
In organizational research, the term Ringelmann effect refers to the inability of members to effectively combine their input so that the group output equals the sum of their individual efforts. This effect encompasses both motivational and coordinational losses, and is an inverse relation between team size and team performance, meaning that more members do not equal better performance. One example of motivational loss is social loafing, which occurs when a member exerts less effort in a group than they would if they were working by themselves. In an influential study by Harkins and Jackson (1985), researchers had participants generate ideas for potential uses of an object, and their outputs were either individually identifiable or all outputs were pooled, obscuring who contributed which ideas. When individual output was identifiable, participants put more effort into their ideas, than when all ideas were pooled together. So, next time a team member feels they’re not working as effortfully or not learning as much in the group as opposed to when they are by themselves, they might be justified to attribute it to the very nature of team projects!
Free-Riding
Another issue stemming from motivation losses is free-riding, where an individual perceives their input to the group to be dispensable and thus works less hard (Nijstad, 2009). Perhaps finding oneself in a team full of high achievers would make one speak up and volunteer less because everyone else just seems to have their academic life in order. Another reason why free-riding occurs is if the group size is too large, which could be defined as a Ringelmann effect. In prior work, experts recommend that a small group be no smaller nor larger than three to five people (Potter, 2020).
Social Compensation
A process that often accompanies free-riding is social compensation. It is a type of motivation gain, meaning that individuals who socially compensate would not have worked as hard if they were by themselves as when they were in a group with free-riders, leading to a better overall group output. Thus, the more motivated and/or capable team buddy will make sure to pick up the work that the slacker has been avoiding. While on paper, research celebrates this motivation gain, it is often a very uncomfortable position to end up in as a team member. All of this leads to a lot of frustration, conflict within a group, and high stress.
Sucker Effect
Alternatively, high achievers might catch on to the fact that they are being overworked and might feel used. Thus, they could reduce the effort they put into the group project to avoid exploitation by free-riding group members, or being “put into the sucker role”. This is a type of motivational loss and the effect has been fittingly named the sucker effect (a bit of an unpleasant name, for someone trying to avoid being exploited) (Nijstad, 2009).
Kohler Effect
One more effect that is a type of motivation gain is the Kohler effect, which entails that “weaker” group members work harder out of fear that the team would otherwise fail solely because of them (Kerr & Hertel, 2011). This is essentially the exact opposite of a free-riding effect. The fact that a weak link performs better in a group than if they were on their own is explained by two mechanisms – social comparison and the effect of perceived indispensability to the group. Social comparison makes the weakest link put in more effort to perform like the other members. Also, when the weakest link needs to do a crucial part of the project, they will work more so that the project is not dragged down because of them. Although it feels like this doesn’t happen in a university group project, based on research, this could be likelier to happen when the “weaker” group member rather fancies their team and wants to see them succeed, or highly values the team outcome (Nijstad, 2009).
Resulting Common Pitfalls in Group Work
These effects that typically affect group work occur during university group projects, but there are also specific difficulties that students encounter when working in teams. Such groups are often created by random assignment and most of the time students do not know each other. This means that students often have different levels of academic performance, motivation and goals. The group exists only for the duration of the project, and there are chances that members will not interact much after the assignment is finished. There aren’t usually predefined roles and the assignment is often a learning task, so there is not much experience with the topic. In most cases, there is no pre-established team leader. Students must negotiate with each other about who will take the lead. Even when there is a group leader, they might not have enough authority. Students’ individual contributions are usually not visible by those who assess their work and the reward for this work, the grade, is going to be the same regardless of their investment.
What Research Shows for Effective Group Work
Group projects should develop skills such as problem-solving, synchronization of individual contributions, learning from each other, time management, and critical thinking. There should be a structure in place that ensures every member has sufficient motivation and resources to contribute and that working together actually takes place. Research has important tips for how to organize successful group assignments.
First of all, groups which work well have received a form of team training before the start of the project (Kapp, 2009, cited in Fittipaldi, 2020). Training can mean being instructed as a team about the outcomes and processes expected. Many faculty projects do not include this training. This might be because teachers are concerned that they don’t have the qualification and time to do that. Another good idea is to establish a team leader from the start. Establishing a group leader and rewarding that leader for taking up the role improves the outcomes of projects (Ferrante et al., 2006, cited in Fittipaldi, 2020).
Moreover, monitoring by the instructor is key. Studies show that “sink or swim” approaches (where students are given the task and are left to figure out group processes on their own) lead to the greatest dissatisfaction (Vik, 2001, cited in Fittipaldi, 2020). Especially for long projects, frequent contact with the instructor is crucial. The instructor offers advice about the progress and helps solve conflicts. Therefore, group cohesion and smooth functioning must be ensured by constant interactions with the instructor. Without it, group projects can risk simply remaining individual learning activities, where students work on their own and they glue their parts together at the last minute.
Another concern is how to form the groups. Strauss and Young (2011) compared three methods of group formation – self-selection, lecturer’s selection and alphabetical order grouping. They found that the majority of students found self-selection the best. The least preferred was alphabetical grouping. Other studies also show that students prefer to select their own team members. When students work with group members they selected, not only their satisfaction improved, but this leads to better results in terms of outcomes, communication, and enthusiasm (Seethamraju & Borman, 2009, cited in Fittipaldi, 2020).
Group assignments should be used when there’s actually work that requires a team. The task must require interdependence (Colbeck et al., 2000). It is important not to assign a project that can be better done individually and also not to make the size of groups too big. Both the nature of the task and the number of people who divide the task between themselves can increase or decrease interdependence.
Lastly, an efficient way to make everyone’s work visible is to use peer evaluations. Peer evaluation entails asking students to rate the degree to which their team members were involved. It greatly reduces social loafing (Aggarwal and O’Brien, 2008, cited in Fittipaldi, 2020), but the evaluations should be submitted anonymously so that students can be honest. Another way to make contributions visible is to request students to submit a division of tasks at the beginning of the project.
Conclusions and Recommendations
All in all, there are many effects taking place during teamwork, some of which are good for the sake of team performance, such as social compensation, and the Kohler effect, but also many negative ones, such as free-riding, the sucker effect, and social loafing. Almost all of these have been encountered by many students in their academic lives and can lead to great dissatisfaction during group work. Taking this into consideration, how do we improve group projects for the future?
To begin with, we recommend explicit instruction about group work. Ideally, this should be done at the start of each project, but since resources for that are limited, it could be a short course introduced in year 1’s curriculum. During this course, students would learn about teamwork and its possible pitfalls, leadership skills, time management, procrastination, assigning member roles, and effective communication. We believe these skills will make group projects more enjoyable, more fruitful, and students will be able to practice group skills intentionally from that moment on.
Secondly, students will work better together if there is more monitoring and guidance as the project unfolds. Each new problem that they are tasked with solving as a group requires different expertise, skill, and management. As such, teacher feedback is key during the very process of working together, so they can learn how to work on problems as they come up, instead of them piling up and everybody scrambling to make the deadline in the final hours..
Thirdly, we advise tutors, teachers, and any organizations that employ group projects to let their students and colleagues self-select their team members at least to some extent. This will help improve satisfaction and overall work motivation, which will also increase life satisfaction (Spillover Hypothesis, Bakker et al., 2009).
Lastly, making contributions explicit and monitoring everyone’s involvement will not only save time for students to focus on the project but also decrease frustration and resentment. Students will be more willing to collaborate and put in the work if they know that the distribution of rewards (the grade) is fair, and being transparent about individual contributions will sabotage the plans of aspiring free-riders. <<
References
-Homan, A. C., van Knippenberg, D., Van Kleef, G. A., & De Dreu, C. K. W. (2007). Bridging faultlines by valuing diversity: Diversity beliefs, information elaboration, and performance in diverse work groups. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(5), 1189–1199. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.5.1189
-Fittipaldi, D. (2020). Managing the dynamics of group projects in higher education: Best practices suggested by empirical research. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 8(5), 1778-1796. https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2020.080515
-Bakker, A. B., Demerouti, E., & Burke, R. (2009). Workaholism and relationship quality: a spillover-crossover perspective. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 14(1), 23. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0013290
-Kerr, N. L., & Hertel, G. (2011). The Köhler group motivation gain: How to motivate the ‘weak links’ in a group. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5(1), 43-55. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00333.x
-Colbeck, C. L., Campbell, S. E., & Bjorklund, S. A. (2000). Grouping in the dark: What college students learn from group projects. The Journal of Higher Education, 71(1), 60-83. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2000.11780816
-Ferrante, C. J., Green, S. G., & Forster, W. R. (2006). Getting more out of team projects: Incentivizing leadership to enhance performance. Journal of Management Education, 30(6), 788-797. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1052562906287968
-Nordberg, D. (2008). Group projects: More learning? Less fair? A conundrum in assessing postgraduate business education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(5), 481-492. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1469787412467123
-Hall, D., & Buzwell, S. (2013). The problem of free-riding in group projects: Looking beyond social loafing as reason for non-contribution. Active Learning in Higher Education, 14(1), 37-49. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1469787412467123
-Hayes, J. H., Lethbridge, T. C., & Port, D. (2003, May). Evaluating individual contribution toward group software engineering projects. In 25th International Conference on Software Engineering, 2003. Proceedings. (pp. 622-627). IEEE.
-Strauss, P., U, A., & Young, S. (2011). ‘I know the type of people I work well with’: student anxiety in multicultural group projects. Studies in Higher Education, 36(7), 815-829. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2010.488720
-Kersebohm, J. C., Lorenz, T., Becher, A., & Doherr, M. G. (2017). Factors related to work and life satisfaction of veterinary practitioners in Germany. Veterinary Record Open, 4(1), e000229. https://doi.org/10.1136/vetreco-2017-000229
-Harkins, S. G., & Jackson, J. M. (1985). The role of evaluation in eliminating social loafing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 11(4), 457-465. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0146167285114011
-Potter, J. (2020, April 27). The Ideal Team Size At Work May Be Smaller Than You Think. Forbes. Retrieved May 2, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaimepotter/2020/04/27/the-ideal-team-size-at-work-may-be-smaller-than-you-think/?sh=74bb843e630a
-Nijstad, B. A. (2009). Group Performance (Social Psychology: A Modular Course) (1st ed.). Psychology Press.
As university students, we have been through a lot of group work. We could not be happier when our group is well-organized and efficient, leading to a product that is worthy of an excellent grade. High-quality, shared work helps us all learn, and in professional settings, satisfaction with colleagues has been linked to higher life satisfaction through higher work satisfaction (Kersebohm et al., 2017). Yet group projects can become a challenge in the negative sense, when barely one or two groupmates respond in the group chat and time is running out. Most often in these cases the entire group project falls into the hands of few students who still harbour some ambition for a higher grade (external motivation), or are just genuinely interested in the project (internal motivation). While it is tempting to attribute this disbalance to one student being motivated and another simply being lazy, research shows there are a lot more processes going on behind the scenes of a poorly distributed group project.
How is a Group Project Defined?
A university group project often involves individuals that are both task and outcome interdependent, meaning that they need each other not only to produce the final product but will also be graded based on that final product. While it should be acknowledged that there are a large amount of factors that influence team performance, such as leadership, informational diversity, and personality, in this article, we will mostly focus on cooperation and coordinating tasks.
In group work, it is expected that the pooling of resources and information of multiple team members and division of the tasks would yield not only a good final product but would also help students learn from each other. Alongside that, it is also expected that students’ teamwork skills would improve, such as communication, leadership, coordination, and distribution of group roles. However, this is not always the case – motivation and coordination losses are a real threat to team outcome (Nijstad, 2009).
Ringelmann Effect & Social Loafing
In organizational research, the term Ringelmann effect refers to the inability of members to effectively combine their input so that the group output equals the sum of their individual efforts. This effect encompasses both motivational and coordinational losses, and is an inverse relation between team size and team performance, meaning that more members do not equal better performance. One example of motivational loss is social loafing, which occurs when a member exerts less effort in a group than they would if they were working by themselves. In an influential study by Harkins and Jackson (1985), researchers had participants generate ideas for potential uses of an object, and their outputs were either individually identifiable or all outputs were pooled, obscuring who contributed which ideas. When individual output was identifiable, participants put more effort into their ideas, than when all ideas were pooled together. So, next time a team member feels they’re not working as effortfully or not learning as much in the group as opposed to when they are by themselves, they might be justified to attribute it to the very nature of team projects!
Free-Riding
Another issue stemming from motivation losses is free-riding, where an individual perceives their input to the group to be dispensable and thus works less hard (Nijstad, 2009). Perhaps finding oneself in a team full of high achievers would make one speak up and volunteer less because everyone else just seems to have their academic life in order. Another reason why free-riding occurs is if the group size is too large, which could be defined as a Ringelmann effect. In prior work, experts recommend that a small group be no smaller nor larger than three to five people (Potter, 2020).
Social Compensation
A process that often accompanies free-riding is social compensation. It is a type of motivation gain, meaning that individuals who socially compensate would not have worked as hard if they were by themselves as when they were in a group with free-riders, leading to a better overall group output. Thus, the more motivated and/or capable team buddy will make sure to pick up the work that the slacker has been avoiding. While on paper, research celebrates this motivation gain, it is often a very uncomfortable position to end up in as a team member. All of this leads to a lot of frustration, conflict within a group, and high stress.
Sucker Effect
Alternatively, high achievers might catch on to the fact that they are being overworked and might feel used. Thus, they could reduce the effort they put into the group project to avoid exploitation by free-riding group members, or being “put into the sucker role”. This is a type of motivational loss and the effect has been fittingly named the sucker effect (a bit of an unpleasant name, for someone trying to avoid being exploited) (Nijstad, 2009).
Kohler Effect
One more effect that is a type of motivation gain is the Kohler effect, which entails that “weaker” group members work harder out of fear that the team would otherwise fail solely because of them (Kerr & Hertel, 2011). This is essentially the exact opposite of a free-riding effect. The fact that a weak link performs better in a group than if they were on their own is explained by two mechanisms – social comparison and the effect of perceived indispensability to the group. Social comparison makes the weakest link put in more effort to perform like the other members. Also, when the weakest link needs to do a crucial part of the project, they will work more so that the project is not dragged down because of them. Although it feels like this doesn’t happen in a university group project, based on research, this could be likelier to happen when the “weaker” group member rather fancies their team and wants to see them succeed, or highly values the team outcome (Nijstad, 2009).
Resulting Common Pitfalls in Group Work
These effects that typically affect group work occur during university group projects, but there are also specific difficulties that students encounter when working in teams. Such groups are often created by random assignment and most of the time students do not know each other. This means that students often have different levels of academic performance, motivation and goals. The group exists only for the duration of the project, and there are chances that members will not interact much after the assignment is finished. There aren’t usually predefined roles and the assignment is often a learning task, so there is not much experience with the topic. In most cases, there is no pre-established team leader. Students must negotiate with each other about who will take the lead. Even when there is a group leader, they might not have enough authority. Students’ individual contributions are usually not visible by those who assess their work and the reward for this work, the grade, is going to be the same regardless of their investment.
What Research Shows for Effective Group Work
Group projects should develop skills such as problem-solving, synchronization of individual contributions, learning from each other, time management, and critical thinking. There should be a structure in place that ensures every member has sufficient motivation and resources to contribute and that working together actually takes place. Research has important tips for how to organize successful group assignments.
First of all, groups which work well have received a form of team training before the start of the project (Kapp, 2009, cited in Fittipaldi, 2020). Training can mean being instructed as a team about the outcomes and processes expected. Many faculty projects do not include this training. This might be because teachers are concerned that they don’t have the qualification and time to do that. Another good idea is to establish a team leader from the start. Establishing a group leader and rewarding that leader for taking up the role improves the outcomes of projects (Ferrante et al., 2006, cited in Fittipaldi, 2020).
Moreover, monitoring by the instructor is key. Studies show that “sink or swim” approaches (where students are given the task and are left to figure out group processes on their own) lead to the greatest dissatisfaction (Vik, 2001, cited in Fittipaldi, 2020). Especially for long projects, frequent contact with the instructor is crucial. The instructor offers advice about the progress and helps solve conflicts. Therefore, group cohesion and smooth functioning must be ensured by constant interactions with the instructor. Without it, group projects can risk simply remaining individual learning activities, where students work on their own and they glue their parts together at the last minute.
Another concern is how to form the groups. Strauss and Young (2011) compared three methods of group formation – self-selection, lecturer’s selection and alphabetical order grouping. They found that the majority of students found self-selection the best. The least preferred was alphabetical grouping. Other studies also show that students prefer to select their own team members. When students work with group members they selected, not only their satisfaction improved, but this leads to better results in terms of outcomes, communication, and enthusiasm (Seethamraju & Borman, 2009, cited in Fittipaldi, 2020).
Group assignments should be used when there’s actually work that requires a team. The task must require interdependence (Colbeck et al., 2000). It is important not to assign a project that can be better done individually and also not to make the size of groups too big. Both the nature of the task and the number of people who divide the task between themselves can increase or decrease interdependence.
Lastly, an efficient way to make everyone’s work visible is to use peer evaluations. Peer evaluation entails asking students to rate the degree to which their team members were involved. It greatly reduces social loafing (Aggarwal and O’Brien, 2008, cited in Fittipaldi, 2020), but the evaluations should be submitted anonymously so that students can be honest. Another way to make contributions visible is to request students to submit a division of tasks at the beginning of the project.
Conclusions and Recommendations
All in all, there are many effects taking place during teamwork, some of which are good for the sake of team performance, such as social compensation, and the Kohler effect, but also many negative ones, such as free-riding, the sucker effect, and social loafing. Almost all of these have been encountered by many students in their academic lives and can lead to great dissatisfaction during group work. Taking this into consideration, how do we improve group projects for the future?
To begin with, we recommend explicit instruction about group work. Ideally, this should be done at the start of each project, but since resources for that are limited, it could be a short course introduced in year 1’s curriculum. During this course, students would learn about teamwork and its possible pitfalls, leadership skills, time management, procrastination, assigning member roles, and effective communication. We believe these skills will make group projects more enjoyable, more fruitful, and students will be able to practice group skills intentionally from that moment on.
Secondly, students will work better together if there is more monitoring and guidance as the project unfolds. Each new problem that they are tasked with solving as a group requires different expertise, skill, and management. As such, teacher feedback is key during the very process of working together, so they can learn how to work on problems as they come up, instead of them piling up and everybody scrambling to make the deadline in the final hours..
Thirdly, we advise tutors, teachers, and any organizations that employ group projects to let their students and colleagues self-select their team members at least to some extent. This will help improve satisfaction and overall work motivation, which will also increase life satisfaction (Spillover Hypothesis, Bakker et al., 2009).
Lastly, making contributions explicit and monitoring everyone’s involvement will not only save time for students to focus on the project but also decrease frustration and resentment. Students will be more willing to collaborate and put in the work if they know that the distribution of rewards (the grade) is fair, and being transparent about individual contributions will sabotage the plans of aspiring free-riders. <<
