Teaching Engineering in NY
Implementing the Engineering Design Process

Goup Management

Managing student groups is a critical part of the engineering design process. To ensure productive group work, it’s important to form student groups strategically, provide a structure for group work, and be clear about student expectations. Here are some tips to help manage this process.

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Tips
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  • Divide students into groups of three. This will provide students an opportunity to exchange ideas, especially if a group gets stuck, while remaining small enough to ensure individual accountability.
  • Assign students different roles. Group roles help create accountable outcomes and manage possible tension since each student has a designated role within the group. Possible group roles include materials manager and recorder.
  • Peer assessment. Students will be more motivated to work together as a team if they know they will be assessed by their peers at the end of a challenge.

Group Work in Action

Watch this video of a student from Ms. Salchli’s class discussing group work.

Keyboard Shortcut Action
Space Pause/Play video playback
Enter Pause/Play video playback
m Mute/Unmute video volume
Up and Down arrows Increase and decrease volume by 10%
Right and Left arrows Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds
0-9 Fast seek to x% of the video.
f Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key.
c Press c to toggle captions on or off

In your own words, describe one technique you’ve used for group management in your classroom that can motivate students to compromise like the student in this clip.