By: Yulissa Huamani, Peak Associate
Online courses are a valuable tool for students to relax their schedule and seek flexibility. This is especially true when students want to take a break from traditional in-person classes or reduce their course load — to stay on track and not fall behind while travelling or recharging. COVID-19 forced educational institutions to reimagine how education could be delivered — at times, this meant replacing in-person interactions with online platforms. Students have become familiar with how online classes work, how they are structured, and how to organize their time accordingly.
While online courses are designed to offer flexibility, group work in this context can often do more harm than good. In theory, group work is meant to help students improve their skills in time management, role delegation, and conflict resolution. However, the lack of accountability and face-to-face interactions can increase pressure, anxiety, and stress on the rest of the team.
In addition, doing group work in an asynchronous course demands more time to collaborate and establishes classist assumptions about students’ availability. Some of those assumptions can include computer literacy, and access to an appropriate online learning environment and high-speed internet. Oftentimes, the group is built with members you haven’t met before, and everyone has different schedules, accessibilities, and responsibilities. Meanwhile, the main options for interaction rely on digital tools and platforms such as Google Meet, Zoom, and Calendar, among others. This would mean that students’ experience with group work will depend on the knowledge and experience each person has with these platforms. This can result in unequal collaborations and an unfair share of workload for each member.
Online courses are meant to allow students to manage their time, learn at their own pace, and be graded based on their understanding of the course material.
Moreover, if one member does not submit their part on time, it immediately affects others. For instance, a challenging situation that can happen in group work is when a team member decides to stop answering messages. In an online setting, this might be further complicated by the hurdles that need to be overcome to contact them, hold them accountable, or solve the issue with the team member before a deadline. Obviously such a thing might occur in group assignments during in-person classes, as well. In general, conflicts like these can impact educators’ schedules because there will be complaints, requested extensions, and it ends up placing negative pressure on them. While simultaneously, places added pressure and work on the rest of the team members and creates frustration.
Students have their reasons as to why they decided to take an online course during that semester. For instance, students with disabilities, full-time workers, caretakers, or those who are living in a different time zone, could struggle keeping up with the material and let alone find a suitable time to communicate and cooperate with their team. Online courses are meant to allow students to manage their time, learn at their own pace, and be graded based on their understanding of the course material. Therefore, the grade shouldn’t rely on students’ ability to navigate scheduling conflicts with others or manage group coordination.
Group work in remote courses shouldn’t be mandatory as it complicates collaboration and could negatively impact students’ grades. Alternatively, there are accessible ways in which we can seek collaboration during remote courses. Some of these are: discussions, panels, and virtual posts to receive feedback from classmates, among others. These are great tools that are more accessible and fair since they allow students to manage their time without being forced to rely on others’ availability and commitment with the project.
