I think university education should focus more on helping students develop graduate attributes rather than learning the content. One of the graduate attributes that I find especially important to teach is how to effectively work in a group. It is an essential skill that every employer looks for irrespective of the discipline. I have used various group projects in my courses over the years and one of the main things I started to notice was that it wasn't the task itself students found challenging, but rather working together as a group. Most students were never taught how to navigate group work and didn’t know how to overcome conflicts that arises in the group. I realised, I first needed to teach students how to work effectively in groups before challenging them to work on group-based assessment tasks.

In 2019, I decided to implement a short program to teach students how to work effectively in a group. This was incorporated into one of my courses, Fundamentals of Biochemistry (BIOC2181) which has an existing group work project. Basing my design on best practices from diverse scholarly sources, I designed this program with hands-on group bonding activities, a workshop on conflict resolution, peer-to-peer teaching activities, feedback sessions, presentations, and an individual term-long reflection diary.

At the end of the Term, I wanted to find out what students thought of their group work experience and conducted an optional survey to get their feedback. The survey data from the 2019 cohort (n= 73) indicates that 88% of the students either agreed or strongly agreed that the assessment task taught them valuable skills to work effectively in a team. As seen by the quotes below, many students also indicated that the best part of the assessment was being part of a group.

One of the main outcomes I wanted to achieve was to help students to get to know each other from the start of the Term and help them build a learning community where there is peer-to-peer learning and support. As seen from my experience data for BIOC2181 over the past 5 years, the introduction of the group project has helped them feel like a part of a learning community. During COVID19 it was extremely difficult for students to form any peer-to-peer relationships as all the courses were shifted to fully online mode. I changed my group work process significantly to suit an online format using Microsoft Teams as a platform for student interaction and group work. This was a huge success as seen by the data shown below where a significant proportion of students strongly agreed they felt like part of a learning community in 2020 and 2021 when we were fully online. The group work really benefited the students to form closer relationships with peers in an online environment and I was really proud of this achievement.

In 2021, I introduced a group work project to my general education course BigFat Myths (GENS1111 and BABS1111). As this is a fully online asynchronous course there were no interactions between students or staff. This course has a significant international student cohort and due to how isolated students have been in the past 2 years I wanted to give them the opportunity to work together and make connections. Based on my experience with BIOC2181 over the years, I finessed the program to help students learn important skills needed to carry out effective group work such as communication, leadership, conflict resolution, reflection, equal contribution, feedback, trust, and accountability. I developed resources, activities, and assessment tasks that were specific for my different courses under these topics that could be incorporated as needed over the Term. The diagram below contains an overview of my group work program.

IMPACT

My work on group work was presented at national and international conferences (LINK)
I was invited to write an article for the Australian Biochemist Magazine (LINK - Pages 17-18)
I was invited to present my work on this at UNSW Connections Seminar in May 2021 (LINK)
I was invited to Co-Lead the UNSW Team Work Community of Practice in 2021 (LINK)
I was invited to be part of a Team at the Faculty of Engineering that received $20000 grant funding to develop a framework for non-design course Teamwork projects that is currently underway (LINK) 
I was invited to give a guest lecture on group work in a postgraduate course run by the Engineering Faculty (GSOE9011 - Eng PGCW Research Skills) in September 2021.

OTHER DIMENSIONS THIS CAN FALL UNDER

Teach-3