Leveraging individual strengths will lead a stronger team. Understanding what they are is an important first step
ME 351 Crucial Conversations Workshop
Thank you for helping your students develop essential interpersonal skills that benefit their careers and personal lives! Group projects can be challenging, however providing structure empowers students to communicate clearly, manage conflict, and succeed. The recommendations below can work for all types of group projects.
Want personalized support? Reach out to us or explore the Effective Team Dynamics program
Forming groups
Learn which grouping factors are the most effective to improve course outcomes, course satisfaction, and instructor ratings.
Save time with FeedbackFruits
Form groups based on survey responses and easily import into Canvas.
Teambuilding
Forming groups is only the beginning!
Help students get to know each other, discuss their working styles and needs, and share their goals.
Student Group Formation Methods
| Method | Pros | Cons | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Student Made Groups |
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| Random Groups |
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| Instructor Made Groups |
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Forming Groups
Consider the below factors for creating student groups. Use this as a starting point and customize according to your class needs. You may even ask students what factors they think are the most important. This transparency fosters a collaborative learning environment and gives students more agency in their learning . Contact CEETE for help with this crowdsourcing process.
Save Time With Group Formation Tools
The College of Engineering provides access and support for Feedback Fruits, a Canvas integration. Visit the Feedback Fruits Support Course to learn more about the group formation tool and other FeedbackFruits templates!
Grouping Factors
Many of the below factors are consistently supported by research to improve course outcomes, course satisfaction, and instructor ratings. For full question text and answers see our Feedback Fruits template or Group Formation Questions (PDF).
Group students who are similar in these factors
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Schedule
Scheduling differences are a major obstacle for working together. If students can’t agree on a time to meet, they become less productive, less motivated, and resentment grows for those that can’t make regular meetings. Consider postponing group formation until 2 weeks after classes start to avoid add/drop headaches.
Which days of the week are you most available for group meetings?
- Monday
- Tuesday
- Wednesday
- Thursday
- Friday
Do you prefer morning, afternoon, or evening meetings?
- 8am to 12pm
- 12pm to 4pm
- 4pm to 9pm
Responsiveness
Communication breakdowns can be a major source of frustration and conflict. Grouping students by their communication preference can mitigate this frustration, though groups should set communication norms after forming.
If you send a teammate a message, how quickly do you expect them to respond?
- Within a couple hours
- Same day
- Any time, as long as its before a project deadline
Work style
This is most relevant when group work is done outside class. Group students with similar work styles to try and prevent students feeling like others aren’t working enough as a team.
How do you like to meet with a work team?
- I like to work independently then share with the team when I am done
- I like to get work collaboratively as a team where we have multiple working meetings together
Topic interest
If your assignments consist of multiple topics students can choose from, group similar interest together. Have students choose their top 2(or 3!) topics.
Group students who are dissimilar in these factors
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Skill/Software experience level
Groups that vary in expertise can encourage peer learning. This isn’t without its own pitfalls, it is possible that one group member takes on a higher teaching role than others. Despite this shortcoming, heterogeneous ability levels are generally preferred by students.
Consider a variation on the below question by asking students to select their highest proficiency from a list of software/skills.
How would you rate your experience using _____ (i.e. MATLAB, CAD)?
- No experience
- Beginner
- Intermediate
- Advanced
- Expert
Curricular interest
Engineering is done through cooperative learning with diverse subject experts. Design teams especially can benefit from diversity of knowledge to make a well informed solution.
What is your major? If undecided, what is your intended major?
- Biomedical Engineering
- Chemical Engineering
- Civil Engineering
- Computer Engineering
- Electrical Engineering
- Engineering Mechanics
- Engineering Physics
- Environmental Engineering
- Geological Engineering
- Industrial Engineering
- Materials Science and Engineering
- Mechanical Engineering
- Nuclear Engineering
- Non-engineering Major
Group roles
Our template has some starter roles, edit roles based on your individual course needs.
What kind of tasks do you naturally gravitate toward?
- Project Planning & Coordination
- Background Research & Requirements
- Concept Development & Design
- Technical Analysis & Modeling
- Implementation / Build / Coding
- Testing & Validation
- Documentation
- Presentation & Communication
- Professional & Team Responsibilities
Other factors you may consider
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What about GPA or expected grade?
Grouping students using a measure of past performance can establish that some students are high performers and others are not.
- Homogenous groupings may reinforce fixed mindset. Students may see themselves as high performers or low performers and act in ways that support that notion. Low performers could come to see themselves as incapable of doing the content and lose motivation
- Heterogenous groupings also risk perpetuating inequality. Higher performers may be more confident in expressing their ideas and less willing to listen to others. They may also take on a leadership role and instruct other students. While this is a benefit for themself, other students do not get the same opportunity.
To foster a growth mindset that everyone can be successful, consider removing GPA as a grouping factor. Instead, consider grouping students by expected grade or performance, asking “What grade do you expect/hope to earn in this course?”.
What about demographics like race and gender?
We find evidence that heterogenous, diverse groups perform better. Factoring in demographics is one way to encourage diversity in groups as long as minoritized students are not the sole representative of their background. Further, creating groups based on race alone can perpetuate race as a determining factor and make students uncomfortable.
Instead of using demographics to sort students, have students discuss their team’s collective strengths, weaknesses, work styles, and communication preferences to increase team effectiveness.
How many questions should I use?
We recommend a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 5 questions, but this depends on your course. We don’t expect you to use all of these questions. Consider:
- Relevance – Scheduling questions may be removed if you want students to only work on projects during class
- Group tasks – Do you want team members to have specialized roles? Do you want some group members to have higher proficiencies and help teach others?
- Context – Consider whether groups should have a predefined makeup, or if that will be a group decision. For example, in a class with group projects you may assign students to a group based on topic interest or have them come up with a topic after forming.
Maintaining Groups
Forming groups is only the beginning! Any combination of students can be successful in a group project. It is not only more realistic to the real world, but also helps students recognize that working well with others is a skill they can develop, not just something that happens by chance if they stumble into the right combination of personalities.
After groups are formed, make class time for those students to get to know each other, discuss their working styles and needs, and share their goals.
Be transparent with your students about why and how you intend to build their skills. Describe the skills you are trying to develop (e.g. self reflection, time management) and explain which class activities are directly linked to those skills (see Table 1 below).
Table 1: Group Member Skills Lesson Plan
| Pre-lab
Self-awareness |
In lab:
Effective communication, active listening, open-mindedness |
Next lab:
Collaboration, productive conflict, delegation and accountability |
| Clifton Strengths Top 5 | Team strengths | Project Tasks |
| Self-Reflection | Demotivators | Peer Feedback |
Encourage them to create a shared calendar of check-in times throughout the semester and set up a communication strategy as soon as possible. You may also provide them with a template meeting agenda that they can adapt for their own group meetings. Here are a few questions you can pose to groups to get them started:
- Do you prefer to gather all the information before making a decision, or would you rather get something started and react/adapt as you go?
- Do you prefer to work through problems out loud with a thought partner, or do you like to figure it out independently?
- What is the best way for teammates to get in contact with you?
- How do you want teammates to handle it if someone is causing conflict on the team?
- Do you prefer to have your work done far in advance, or are you motivated by deadlines? (“work best under pressure”)
- Alternatively: When do you usually get your work done- early, last minute, or steadily over time?
It is not easy to find time in a course with a lot of content to cover. That being said, it will be well worth it as you and your students avoid the team breakdowns that can consume time later in the semester.
The Effective Team Dynamics (ETD) program, run through the Center for Innovation in Engineering Education (CIEE), comes to classes and facilitates these activities for students. They have materials for general group cohesion, setting roles, and conflict resolution. They often rely on Clifton Strengths as a framework, but this is not a necessary component. Fill out the interest survey on their website to get started!