Sometimes faculty members tell us they want to get their students involved in longer-term group projects (from several weeks to the whole quarter) because these projects teach teamwork and develop communication and collaboration skills. Great! We’re into that type of skill development here too.
But let’s talk about one of the practical realities: some students will “freeload”; that is, not do as much work as their peers. When every member of the group earns the same grade, the hard workers need to make up for the slackers in order to get the A they are looking for. Many faculty members, as overachievers, remember this problem from when they themselves were students – they remember feeling resentment and frustration that they were doing more than their peers in group scenarios.
Research on ways to reduce freeloading and increase student satisfaction with group work is emerging slowly. Here are a few principles I’ve picked up from the literature and from talking with colleagues:
- Students need to be given the chance to do peer evaluations within their groups. The high achievers don’t want to suffer in silence.
- We, as instructors, need to build in opportunities for students to discuss the group process early. Our students aren’t born knowing how to work effectively in teams. I’ve held out-of-class meetings with each student group in a class to help them talk about how to trouble-shoot group interaction problems before they start, and other instructors (see below) recommend requiring student groups to do periodic ungraded evaluations of each member throughout the quarter. Dyrud (2001) has virtually eliminated last-minute group crises using these early, formative evaluations.
- Students sometimes respond well to the opportunity to distribute points to each member of the group. Maranto and Gresham (1998) find that asking students to distribute an uneven number of points (say 9 points to 4 of their group members) helps students identify the best/worst contributors. With proper use, this technique can help you adjust student grades according to their contributions.
If you’d like to read further, here are some recommendations:
- Dyrud, M. A. (2001). Group projects and peer review. Business Communication Quarterly 64(4): 106(7).
- Shows ungraded, formative review sheet, recommending repeated use at weeks 4 and 7, with a formal evaluation upon project completion.
- Brooks, C. M. and J. L. Ammons (2003). Free riding in group projects and the effects of timing, frequency, and specificity of criteria in peer assessments. Journal of Education for Business 78(5): p268(5). DOI: 10.1080/08832320309598613
- Provides a sample evaluation packet, also pointing out the benefits of early timing to reduce social loafing.
- Maranto, R. and A. Gresham (1998). Using “World Series shares” to fight free riding in group projects. PS: Political Science & Politics 31(4): 789(3).
- Describes the “Knickrehm Method” of dividing a given number of points among group members in confidential balloting using a key.
We’d like to hear how you’ve handled the problem of freeloading in group work. What works? What doesn’t?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
In my experience as a student I have to agree completely that there is a problem with free loading. I really like the idea of having a peer review process which would hold the “slackers” accountable. One of my chemistry professors told us his trick to having a productive study group was to find the right people to compliment your work. He had this easy word evaluation quiz that grouped people into four categories the “driver,” the “amiable,” the “analytic,” and the “expressive.” He proposed that one reason why people slacked off was because they weren’t given the right type of work to compliment their personality. In a lab report I know a lot of people who can’t stand doing the routine calculations but that would love to express their findings and visa versa. Another reason for free loaders is that they aren’t motivated with the nature of the project at all and sometimes don’t care about the class even. Finally, many freeloaders are those students that have gotten too far behind in the course work to really feel effective. These are larger sociological issues to the problem of freeloaders, but I think perhaps this angle on the issue is worth investigating further as well.
I found that the same students would tend to be the group “speaker”, when I had each group present to the whole class. Now I specify at the beginning of the quarter that each student needs to be a designated group speaker at least once – and give participation points for it. Even if some students still talk more, it evens out the speaking participation a bit.
Wow, Karinna, great idea! I think I’ll start doing that.
I also agree that longer-term group projects teach students very valuable lessons, and that freeloading is a difficult problem for faculty to deal with. It is oftentimes easy to spot the freeloader of the group. However, I do feel the need to present a potential point of view of those students who may appear to be freeloaders but truly aren’t. In a classroom, faculty will encounter students of all personalities, and some students will naturally be more reserved and introverted than others. Group projects may be very challenging for some students, and they may truly struggle the idea just as those students who excel in a group atmosphere may struggle in a more independent and isolated setting. Thus these students that may have a tendency to be more quiet, timid, or introverted may not speak up as often during group projects which would lead other group members to feel as if they didn’t contribute as much. Perhaps the introverted student contributed significantly in other ways but not as “loudly” or “visually” as other students. These students, though a minority, fall into a background and may receive an unfair grade on a group project due to a false impression. Thus, faculty should take care to be observant of their students’ behaviors/personalities and use that information when considering participation in a group project – distinguish the true freeloaders from those who are just more reserved.
Also, while freeloaders are unfortunately still present in higher education classes, there will also be many instances when students do equally participate in a group project (especially in upper level/graduate classes). In these cases, using a scoring system with unequal numbers (as described above) may create competition when there was none present beforehand. Someone in the group will want to be scored the highest (and no one will want to be scored the lowest by their group-mates). My fear is that then the collaboration would become a competition. So in this case, perhaps a scoring system isn’t necessary. I think the idea of trouble-shooting any group problems early on and having discussions about the group process throughout with the faculty member is a great idea such that appropriate action for each unique group situation may be taken.
Overall, I suppose each faculty member must use his/her own judgement in each specific situation. There are a number of benefits for students participating in group projects, but faculty members must be aware that all students learn differently and have very different personalities.
Thanks for the great resources/recommendations!
Here’s a comment from Alexandra (sorry about the technical glitch, Alexandra, but thanks for this comment!):
I’m currently a student in the MBA program at UCF, and one thing that is a constant throughout courses is the use of group projects. Usually I dread group projects for the very reason you discussed above regarding freeloaders. However, one professor did an excellent job in essentially wiping out this issue during the course.
In the beginning of the semester, he required that we sign up for a program called Group Table. From there our team was able to create our “group” and work from there. We were able to upload documents, revise them, allocate and assign tasks, set deadlines, and even virtually hold meetings in our live chat room. In the middle of the semester, our professor had each team invite him as a “guest” to the group so he could see our progress. There he was able to see what each person had contributed and base our participation grade on that. This accountability that Group Table was able to provide, motivated everyone to contribute knowing that the professor would be basing a large part of our grade on the participation element.
Since then, my teammates and I continue to use group table for our other classes. It is just an overall great program for keeping everything together and enabling us to efficiently complete our projects.
http://www.grouptable.com