Pros
Online or Face to Face Group work
Encourages collaboration among students.
Helps students learn soft communication skills of team work vital in the workplace.
Results in more student to student interaction.
Promotes a more student centered classroom where students own the new knowledge.
Reinforces class material as students talk about class topic among themselves.
Creates bonds among students.
Gives students a sense of belonging so crucial to the success of an online class.
Permits students to learn collaboration tools such as Wiki or Google Documents.
Cons
Online or Face to Face Group Work has its disadvantages too.
One person does all the work. And that one person resents having to do all the work or most of the work to get that group grade.
Lazy group members who don't show up makes other group members who are working do extra work to get the good grade.
Faculty have to get creative with grading by giving harder working group members a higher grade while giving absent group members a zero so more work for faculty to keep track of it all.
Some students don't like to do online group projects and prefer to work alone. Faculty have to design extra assignments for the solitary students.
Many faculty complain of the extra work online group project creates and that extra work is usually not translated into extra faculty salary. As a result, many faculty members will want teaching any class with online group projects.
Is it worth it to have online group projects in an online class? What do you think? Comment under this thread.
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