Koh, M. H., & Barbour, M. K. (2009, April). Strategies for instructors on how to improve online groupwork. Paper discussion presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA.

1. Strategies for instructors on how to promote an online
groupwork
Myung Hwa Koh
Riverside City College, CA
Michael K. Barbour
Wayne State University, MI
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2. Overview of Presentation
 Research Questions
 Methodology
 Research Site
 Participants
 Data Analysis
 Findings
 Conclusions and Implications
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3. Research Purpose and Questions
 The purpose of this study was to explore the
experience of students in online groupwork.
Our intent was to find strategies that could
be implemented to assist students in
completing groupwork online.
 The main two research questions were
1. How do students perceive their online groupwork?
2. What do students suggest for faculty members how to
facilitate student groupwork?
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4. Research Design
The study adopted qualitative
methods (a background survey and
individual interviews) to answer the
two research questions.
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5. Research Site
 The course was supported by WebCT
and HorizonWinba.
 The course had two phases of the
course flow.
 Phase One (Synchronous online classes)
 Phase Two (Asynchronous online classes)
 The course required students to be
involved in weekly group activities and a
group project.
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6. Participants
 The target population for this study was
graduate students at a large southern
university who were taking one course in
instructional technology.
 Sixstudents, all the two group members, in
two groups completed a background survey
and participated in four interviews at one-
month intervals.
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7. Data Analysis
 Constant comparative methods were
used to analyze and interpret the
interviews.
 Qualitative data was organized
according to the participants’ response
to each interview question.
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8. Research Question One
How do students perceive their online groupwork?
 Online groupwork helped students to construct knowledge by
allowing them to experience multiple perspectives from the
other group members.
 When Julia was asked, “Did you learn through group work?” she
answered “Yes, you learn because other people are sharing their
ideas, experiences, feedback, seeing how people communicate.”
 However, they have encountered delayed feedback from group
members, lack of accountability, difficulty communicating with
each other in order to make decisions, and difficulty
understanding group project goals.
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9. Research Question Two
What do students suggest for faculty members how to facilitate student
groupwork?
Categories Sub- Strategies for Instructors
categories
Course Designing for Providing multiple communication methods for
Design facilitating groups
interaction
Providing an Providing a specific deadline, checklists, rubrics,
overall plan and examples.
for the class Giving plenty of clear benchmarks about where
students should be at certain points in the semester.
Posting weekly announcement
Preparing for Setting up a WebCT course in advance before the
technology first class started
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10. Research Question Two (cont)
Categories Sub-categories Strategies for Instructors
Process Helping Group Providing group formation guidelines
formation Limiting group size
Helping students a find a group
Building sense of Having a face-to-face meeting
connection Providing a time for group members to learn each others’ background
and skills
Building virtual Having students knowing how to use communication tools.
team skills Addressing groupwork process , strategies, and characteristics of
groupwork
Being involving in Checking if they were on track
group process Monitoring their groupwork process
Checking to see if there is any problem
Evaluating the Being more involved in group evaluation.
group process Providing a group evaluation rubric or checklist for group evaluation.
Having students submit individual work samples.
Assigning a group meeting time, attend their group meeting, and
evaluate each group member.
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11. Conclusions and Implications
 In this study, participants indicated that the
instructor’s role should include being a facilitator,
motivator, and guide. They also felt that instructors
should be prepared to design and facilitate
exceedingly effective learning experiences.
 Future research studies with larger samples and
different courses in other universities are needed to
further examine how to form effective groups in online
learning environments. Another important area of
research is the development of an instructional design
model for online groupwork.
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12. Questions and Comments
Dr. Myung Hwa Koh
mhkoh67@gmail.com
Riverside City College, Riverside, CA
Dr. Michael K. Barbour
mkbarbour@gmail.com
Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
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