Welcome to the Teaching & Learning Guide for Incorporating Small Group Work in Online Courses! 

This guide includes best practices and tips designed to help you: 

• Identify effective methods to organize group activities in online courses;

• Examine various online tools for using group work in online courses;

• Implement group work using effective tools;

• Request support from your Instructional Design Partner and the Technology Service Desk.

Whether your course is face-to-face, online, hybrid, or HyFlex, you can help students feel connected to their peers and have meaningful conversations by dividing the larger class into small groups for discussions. Providing small groups for students to discuss course materials can help them form a community where knowledge and skills increase as students work together. Students can also more easily keep track of discussion replies in small groups.

Tips for fostering group discussions: 

Be intentional when creating groups. 

You can use beginning-of-the-course student introductions and/or surveys to guide your decisions as you create small groups for your course. For example, you may choose to group together students who have similar research interests or put together groups of students with different backgrounds. These intentional groupings can increase the likelihood that students will develop a rapport with each other. 

Ask groups to produce work, not just discuss. 

If you assign discussion questions over course readings or other materials to small groups, it may be helpful to ask students to produce a group summary of their discussion to turn in to you. This will ensure students are interacting with each other and actively listening to each others’ responses. You can also allow students to discuss privately and then report back as a group to the entire class, either in a discussion post or in a synchronous class meeting. This allows students to work through ideas together without the additional concern of being assessed. 

Ask questions that promote deep thinking. 

The type of questions you ask students to discuss in small groups can make a huge difference in the quality of discussion. Asking questions that promote critical thinking means moving away from questions that only require memorization or summary and toward reflecting on and applying concepts. For example, asking open-ended questions like, “What was the most challenging concept in the readings this week?” can lead to students helping each other figure out the concept rather than guessing or recapping without full understanding. Questions that promote deep thinking may also be intentionally written to spark difference in opinions. Deep thinking questions might include asking about the implications of a course concept or applying it to a real-world problem using a case study. 

Assign fewer discussions.

With fewer discussions to engage with throughout the semester, students are able to commit more attention to the discussions they are required to participate in. This can also lead to more in-depth and meaningful discussions. By assigning fewer discussions, you can give students more time to produce an in-depth, well-written summary or reflection as well as allow students to spend more time reading and responding to peers. 

Allow responses beyond text. 

Giving students more flexibility in their responses can lead to more engaged and creative discussions. For example, you can allow students the option to respond with audio, video, PowerPoint presentations,  concept maps, and more. When students can pick the method of response, they can respond from their own communication strengths, which leads to clearer explanations. Having a variety of responses from peers may also help students feel more excited to participate and review each others’ responses. Be sure to work with your Instructional Design Partner on incorporating audio and video discussion options accessibly in your courses so that no student is excluded from the learning community.

You can create groups for students to collaborate on group assignments, pages, collaborations, and more. You can also allow students to create their own groups. 

Review the Canvas Guides below as you set up and use groups in Canvas:

• What are groups?

• How do I add a group set in a course?

• How do I automatically assign students to groups?

• How do I manually assign students to groups?

• How do I view content and student activity within a group as an Instructor?

Assigning small groups to complete assignments and projects can help students work and solve problems together while also leading to better understanding through collaboration and social learning. Students can benefit from learning to work with peers from different backgrounds and interests and who have different strengths. 

Collaborative assignments also give students the opportunity to share the workload and thus create more meaningful results than they could have alone. Collaborative learning can include group presentations, team-based writing, group case study analyses, and more. 

Tips for Creating Collaborative Activities: 

Ask students to define roles and responsibilities for their group and create a team contract.

Many students become frustrated with group work when they feel others in the group are not contributing equal time and effort. These frustrations can be lessened by encouraging students to establish roles and responsibilities (“group norms”) before they begin working on a project. The beginning of the semester is also a great time to encourage students to create a meeting/communication plan. A team contract can ensure accountability of group members.  

Help students understand the purpose of group work.

It may be helpful to clearly explain to students why you are assigning a particular project as a group project by linking the activity to course learning objectives and reminding students that learning to overcome the challenges inherent to group work is a valuable skill to develop in college and builds important skills for the future.

Provide tools for collaboration.

Tools for collaboration may include advice as well as online resources. For example, you might assist students in assigning group roles so that each student has the opportunity to use their individual strengths and provide students with resources for understanding their own strengths. You can also provide a space to collaborate by creating a shared Google Doc, Google Drive folder, or Canvas Group Homepage for students to use throughout their project. 

Assign individual tasks along with group tasks as part of projects.

Asking students to individually submit written work or other deliverables throughout their project can help you keep track of each student's engagement. You might assign regular check-ins about group projects in the form of progress reports or short reflections. You may also find it helpful to ask students to submit pieces of a project individually.  

Collect and distribute peer reviews.

You can help foster equity and fairness in grading by asking students to reflect on the contributions of their peers. Students who have worked closely with their groups throughout the semester can provide valuable feedback and insights to each other and to you. 

Peer reviews can be collected and distributed to students in several different ways. You may provide peer feedback as part of students' progress reports/end-of-project reflections or you may ask for students to submit a survey at the end of the project where you ask students to grade their group members and discuss what they contributed to the project. 

Canvas leverages collaborative technology to allow multiple users to work together on the same document at the same time. Collaborative documents are saved in real-time, meaning a change made by any of its users will be immediately visible to everyone. As the instructor, you will also be able to see comments and edits made by students in the Collaboration documents.

Review the resources below to learn more about using Collaborations. 

• What are Collaborations?

• How do I use the Collaborations Index Page?

• How do I create a Google Drive Collaboration?

• How do I delete a Collaboration?

Synchronous class meetings via Zoom provide a great space to facilitate small group discussions in online classes. 

Tips for Breakout Sessions:

Have students work toward a goal with deliverables.

Students are more likely to use their breakout sessions effectively if they are asked to present or submit evidence of their work. For example, you may assign students a problem to solve in their breakout room and ask them to submit their answers on a shared document before the session ends. You can also ask students to add more general notes to a shared document during their breakout if you are using a Think-Pair-Share type format for breakout sessions. 

Give groups different challenges or questions.

You may find that when all groups have the same questions or materials to work with, they start to repeat each other or overlap when the class comes back together. You can avoid this by assigning each group a different set of questions or challenges to work through in small groups and then present in the large group. This strategy works particularly well for reviewing case studies or analyzing real-world examples of a concept. 

Ensure small groups can access the discussion questions.

You may share instructions or questions about what you would like students to discuss on your screen in your full Zoom session. However, once you put students into breakout rooms, they will no longer be able to see your screen. You can prepare for this by typing the discussion questions in the chat box or by sharing a link in the chat to a Google Doc with instructions/questions.

You can use the breakout rooms feature in Zoom to facilitate small group work during synchronous online class sessions. The videos below will help you create and manage accessible Zoom sessions with breakout rooms. You can also review the Zoom guide to pre-assigning participants to breakout rooms.

Collaboration: Incorporating Collaborative Learning in Your Courses is included in the Strategies for Transformative Teaching Series of Workshops facilitated by the Center for Development, Design, & Delivery. These workshops will provide you with best practices and concrete strategies for common teaching tasks, challenges, and opportunities. The workshops draw on research-based best practices from the literature on teaching and learning to help you apply those practices in your courses.

You can work one-on-one with your Instructional Design Partner at any time during the semester to incorporate the strategies you are learning into your courses or for support with developing your courses in Canvas.

Collaboration: Incorporating Collaborative Learning in Your Courses 

Workshop Description

Collaborative learning encourages students to effectively work with peers, help each other learn, and feel a sense of belonging to a learning community. Instructors can design collaborative learning activities for pairs, small groups, or larger groups, including peer learning, pair sharing, problem-solving, and more. Learn how to design and create collaborative learning activities in this workshop. 

• Alder, A. (2018, September 27). Use Small Group Discussion to Connect your Students. Retrieved January 27, 2021 from https://www.uwidocs.org/2018/09/27/use-small-group-discussions-to-connect-your-students/ 

• Lieberman, M. (2019, March 27). Discussion Boards: Valuable? Overused? Discuss. Retrieved January 20, 2021 from https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/03/27/new-approaches-discussion-boards-aim-dynamic-online-learning 

• Collaborative Projects and Assignments: Learn More Effectively in a Collaborative Classroom. (n.d.). Retrieved January 20, 2021 from https://collegesofdistinction.com/advice/collaborative-projects-and-assignments-learn-more-effectively-in-a-collaborative-classroom/ 

• McGrath, L.B. (2013, September 3). Collaboration in the Humanities. Retrieved January 28, 2021 from https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/gradhacker/collaboration-humanities 

• Davidson, C.N. (2011, August 26). Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age. Retrieved January 28, 2021 from https://www.chronicle.com/article/collaborative-learning-for-the-digital-age/ 

• Questions That Promote Deeper Thinking. (n.d.). Retrieved January 28, 2021 from https://www.lavc.edu/profdev/library/docs/promotethink.aspx 

Instructional Design Partners

Instructional Design Partners in the Center for Development, Design, & Delivery design and present learning solutions to continually enhance institutional and instructor performance. We collaborate closely with instructors to translate course objectives into meaningful, customized courses tailored to each instructor’s specific needs, leveraging an aptitude for design and development, along with excellent problem-solving and analytical skills. 

Our technical expertise encompasses a range of programs and best practices, including Canvas, Quality Assurance, Universal Design, and more. Instructional Designers partner with academic components to answer questions about teaching and learning in one-on-one consultations, small group work, symposia, and workshops.

Technical Support

To request technical support, submit a Technology Service Desk email to start a ticket.