About Group Work

The Case Study assignment will be completed as a team. These assignments will require group members to collaborate outside of class, either through collaborative documents, discussion boards or virtual meetings.

Group membership will be randomly assigned in the first week of class. You will be informed about which group you are a part of during the first week of class and can also check via the People section of the class. You will remain with your group for the duration of the course. Each member will get the same grade on the group assignments. However, your participation grade for the course will be impacted by your contribution to the group. This is based primarily on peer evaluations prepared by each group member at the end of the course.

Collaborating with Group Members

There are several collaborative tools available for your group to use. I suggest discussing with your group how and when you are going work together. There are two main things to consider:

How and when are you going to communicate as a group?
What role and/or responsibilities will each team member have in each assignment?

Be sure to clearly communicate who will be responsible for submitting your group's deliverables.

Communication

Asynchronous

Click on "People" in the near left navigation tab. Then click on the "Groups" tab. Learn more about Groups: Group Creation and Interaction for Students (Video)

Within groups, you can:

View the group list
Start a discussion
Send a message
Create group collaborations
- As an OU student, you should have access to Microsoft OneDrive which allows you to co-author documents in real time. Go to onedrive.com and sign in using your OU email address and OU password. You can find out more about how OneDrive works.

Synchronous

You may be familiar with Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, or Skype. Feel free to use one of these options, or any others that your group may be more familiar with, in order to communicate in real time.

Dealing with the "Free-Loader" Problem

Since part of your grade is linked to group work, the potential for "free-loading" does exist. If it does arise, the following steps must be taken:

Groups must directly and openly confront instances of such behavior as early as possible. Ideally, once confronted, the behavior will cease and no further steps are required.
If early group efforts to confront the problem fail, team members must let me know as soon as possible that a problem exists. I will schedule a meeting with all group members to discuss the problem and its causes. Hopefully, the behavior will then cease and no further steps are required. This meeting must take place early in the module.

Remember, there is little I can do if groups delay letting me know about a problem with only one or two weeks left in the course.

What I can and will do is adjust the 'group' portion of each individual grade as explained below to account for relative individual contributions to a group’s efforts.

Peer Evaluation

Each team member of the team is expected to make an equitable contribution to the overall effort. Each team member will be expected to contribute in a major way to the organization effort (who should do what), quantity of work developed, quality of the work developed, and/or make a major contribution to the team dynamic (working together to brainstorm ideas, evaluate alternatives and make choices).