What are the hazards with online group work?
According to Deakin’s Division of Student Life counsellors, many students HATE online group work. These are the hazards (all of which can be avoided): • Freeloaders – some students will sit back and let others do all the work, knowing they will probably still receive good marks. Two things you can do to avoid this are to use some kind of self/peer assessment and to divide the task so that some parts are assessed individually. • IT/access difficulties – some students may not have strong IT skills, or may have limited or slow access to online collaboration areas, and this may limit their ability to contribute. Some mentoring and technical support will be necessary, especially in the early stages, and you should always choose the simplest technology available for the task. • Timezones and slow responses – when some group members are in different timezones or are only occasionally logged on to DSO, communication can be slow and frustrating. To overcome these problems you could set up group
