As you design the project, focus on: 

• Group formation and membership changes: Carefully consider how you’ll form groups to align with your learning goals and decide how you’ll handle situations like students dropping the course or requesting a change of group. 
• Assigning or suggesting roles: Consider assigning a team leader or let groups choose their own. Leaders can facilitate discussions and ensure project deliverables are submitted on time. Consider defining other roles as well to ensure all tasks are covered. 
• Establishing team contracts: Have teams create a contract that outlines each member’s responsibilities, including communication, meeting attendance, and respectful exchange of ideas. Provide a template that they can customize.

Early in the course, help students: 

• Understand the importance of group work: Continually highlight the real-world benefits of the skills students will gain from group work. Emphasize the added value of learning to collaborate on geographically distributed teams. 
• Build relationships with one another: Give teams the opportunity to get to know each other before diving into the main project. Consider using low-stakes tasks or icebreaker activities early on to help students build a team identity and start collaborating effectively. 
• Discuss common teamwork challenges: Take time to discuss or role-play common teamwork problems, like dealing with a dominant team member or a teammate who doesn’t contribute fully. Brainstorm strategies for overcoming these issues. 

As teams begin working, you can: 

• Require activity logs: Ask students to log their contributions to the project. This helps you monitor group activity and allows students to track their own progress. 
• Provide collaboration tools: Encourage the use of tools for collaboration within your learning management system (LMS) or external tools like Zoom, Teams, or Google Hangouts for both synchronous and asynchronous communication. 
• Be accessible: Make yourself available to student groups for quick assistance. Regularly check discussion boards or chat tools, hold office hours, and respond promptly to emails. 

To ensure the best outcomes: 

• Include reflection opportunities: Assign tasks that prompt students to reflect on what they’ve learned from working in groups. This could be done through a discussion board or a reflective assignment. 
• Assess both individual and group performance: In addition to evaluating the group’s final product, ask individuals to submit a summary or take a test. This fosters accountability and discourages nonparticipation.