JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION THEORY AND PRACTICE

Achieving Change in Students’ Attitudes Toward Group

Projects by Teaching Group Skills

Author(s): Lawrence O. Hamer, Robert D. O’Keefe

Citation: Lawrence O. Hamer, Robert D. O’Keefe, (2013) "Achieving Change in Students’ Attitudes Toward Group Projects by Teaching Group Skills," Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, Vol.13, Iss. 2, pp. 25 - 33

Article Type: Research paper

Publisher: North American Business Press

Abstract:

Despite the many positive benefits which can be derived from group assignments, faculty members

frequently report that students generally dislike being assigned to a group project. This paper reports a

quasi-experiment which presented students with information about the relevance and importance of

group skills during the time in which they were working on an assigned group project, and then measured

the students’ attitudes toward group projects. The reported study demonstrates that instructors can alter

students’ perceptions of group work by incorporating instruction about group skills into group

assignments.