Group Formation

The Main Idea:  There are many reasons you may want assign students to groups rather than letting them form their own group. Here I suggest one way to assign students to groups and pairs that encourages them to meet new people, but also tries to avoid common complaints and pitfalls of random group/partner assignments. I also like this because it means everyone has a built-in peer to consult with for random questions and study groups even when they may not already know someone else in class.

Details: I typically have students presenting a particular paper or topic which I have already scheduled throughout the semester, and so one of the first assignments I have for students is to submit their top 3 or 4 preferences for topic/date independently- this partially mitigates students from just picking their friends, and hopefully allows them to choose a topic that piques their interests and fits into their workload schedule for the semester.

Once I have their preferences, I put them into a spreadsheet, and allocate students based on their rankings- with luck, there aren’t too many blank spots, or pooling in popular spots since they’re choosing based on schedule as well as topic. If I have open spots, I’ll typically ask for volunteers to move, and if that fails, add some “extra credit” incentive to get students to move, particularly trying to get those in the popular spots.

Then, to combat issues with free riders, I ask students to grade their group members individually as well as themselves, and to give the rationale and contribution to the project/assignment along with the grade. I will adjust the overall group grade up/down for each individual after receiving their peer grades. Typically, there are only issues of incompatible work schedules here at Middlebury, but occasionally, students will comment that a member really went above and beyond, or that someone is only taking the course pass/fail, and so didn’t contribute. Since the grades corroborate most of the time, I’ve never had to deal with the issue of students disagreeing about their own contributions. The vast majority of the time, students are harder on themselves than their peers, and give one another very generous scores.