Allocating groups

Use this guide to choose a section method to assign students to their group projects. Allocating students will be different for every cohort, depending on your context, what information you have on students and resources available to you.

Approaches

There are several different approaches to allocating groups. How you approach allocation will vary according to:

how much information you have about the students,
how much capacity you have to be able to deliberately engineer groups from the student cohort, and
the concerns you are most focused on mitigating.

Considerations

Group size: Often the ideal group is 3-5 students. Pairs have limited diversity of ideas and are heavily impacted by students dropping out. Groups of six or more become increasingly difficult to coordinate and easier for ‘free-riding’ to hide in (Gibbs, 2009; Watkins, 2005). That said, the scale of the project itself can sometimes justify the formation of larger teams.
Diversity: Creating diverse groups is important to gain the full benefits of group work. However, where possible, you might avoid groups that isolate students from minority groups (Takeda & Homberg, 2014), particularly in the context of non-traditional disciplines for those groups (e.g. women in engineering) (Rosser, 1998).
Capability: You might find it beneficial to group higher-performing students with lower-performing ones, to help knowledge transfer (Felder & Brent, 2007).

Selection methods

Select a method of allocating students into groups to see its pros and cons.

Educator-Allocated 

In this method, divide the cohort into groups based on set criteria, personal judgement, or both. These criteria often include:

gender
cultural diversity
international and domestic students
age (e.g. mature-age students)
first in family students
academic performance

While this method often leads to well-constructed groups, it does take a large amount of time and effort.

In larger cohorts without a proportionally large teaching team, this may be exacerbated by having less detailed information on each individual student. A solution could be to require students to complete a form with key information before allocating groups.

Pair-Allocated (recommended – Reid & Garson, 2017)

In this method (sometimes called mixed-pair selection), students self-select into pairs, which you then combine into groups of four. This approach allows each student to have at least some say over their group while still allowing you to engineer groups for diversity.

While this method requires some upfront investment of time, it may require less preparation than fully assigned groups. 

Student-Allocated 

Students self-sort into groups. While students often prefer this method (Mantzioris & Kehrwald, 2013), it can lead to unequal groups and poor group work as friends often have difficulty working effectively and fairly as a team.

In large cohorts there may be an advantage to student-allocated groups, as you may have limited knowledge about each student and are therefore less well-equipped to deliberately allocate them.

Topic-Allocated

Random (not recommended)

Keeping it clear

No matter which allocation method you decide, communicating your methodology to the students may help alleviate any feelings of unfairness.

Students often respond poorly to what they see as unclear processes (Kelly, 2009).

Also make sure you have a plan for group allocation if students don’t show up to the first class (including the possibility that they drop the course).

References

Felder, R., & Brent, R. (2007). Cooperative Learning. In ACS Symposium Series (Vol. 970, pp. 34–53). https://doi.org/10.1021/bk-2007-0970.ch004

Gibbs, G. (2009). The assessment of group work: Lessons from the literature.

Keller, J. M. (1987). Development and use of the ARCS model of instructional design. Journal of Instructional Development, 10(3), 2–10. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02905780

Kelly, P. (2009). Group Work and Multicultural Management Education. Journal of Teaching in International Business, 20(1), 80–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/08975930802671273

Mantzioris, E., & Kehrwald, B. (2013). Allocation of Tertiary Students for Group Work: Methods and Consequences. Ergo, 3(2), Article 2. https://ojs.unisa.edu.au/index.php/ergo/article/view/924

Reid, R., & Garson, K. (2017). Rethinking Multicultural Group Work as Intercultural Learning. Journal of Studies in International Education, 21(3), 195–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315316662981

Rosser, S. V. (1998). Group Work in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics: Consequences of Ignoring Gender and Race. College Teaching, 46(3), 82–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/87567559809596243

Takeda, S., & Homberg, F. (2014). The effects of gender on group work process and achievement: An analysis through self- and peer-assessment. British Educational Research Journal, 40(2), 373–396. Scopus. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3088

In this collection

Approaches

Considerations

Selection methods

Keeping it clear

Further reading

References