Group Work Supports Learning!

Group work provides a valuable learning activity to increase student involvement and interactions with their own learning experiences. A group work assignment engages learners with peer-to-peer contacts and establishing collaborative relationships. Participating in a group helps students develop interpersonal communication skills such as providing constructive feedback, active listening, and conflict resolution. These are considered very important skills in the workplace, where employees are often expected to work in diverse teams and problem solve together. By expressing ideas and sharing different perspectives, students gain a deeper understanding about various content and concepts. Students also learn how to combine their personal knowledge and skills to improve a project or enhance problem solving. In addition, the social interactions that occurs in groups promotes a supportive community of learners, which encourages students to collaborate and construct knowledge together.

Canvas provides various tools that are useful for creating and managing group work. Instructors have automatically or manually assign students to certain groups, or allow students to self-enroll. Canvas provides the capacity to designate certain learning activities as Group Assignments, and grades can be awarded for the entire group, or for each individual group member.  Groups can be assigned their own dedicated discussion board, which is only available to the instructor and members of that group.  Instructors are also able to visit any group’s home page, where they can view a variety of group activities. The Canvas collaborations tool affords access to web-based tools such as Google Docs and Office 365, which can be very helpful for facilitating group-work. Through these tools, multiple users can have anytime/anywhere access to work on the same file and simultaneously share updated information.  Additionally, by following the steps below, instructors can allow students to make their own groups so they can work together on assignments or form study sessions.
the option to

1. Select Settings from the Course Navigation menu.
2. Under Course Details, scroll down to the bottom for more options.
3. Check the box for Let students organize their own groups

Group work presents a lot of learning opportunity in all modalities; Canvas provides excellent tools for integrating group activities in any course.