Unintended Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Consequences of Group Assignments

Abstract

Pedagogical strategies can be thought of as a set of stimuli placed in students' environment to influence their cognition, affect, and behavior. The design of strategies such as group assignments and a comprehensive understanding of their consequences for students should then include an analysis of all three of these elements and the interrelationships that exist among them. As such, this study investigated the unintended cognitive, affective, and behavioral consequences of group assignments experienced by undergraduate business students. The discovery-oriented method of grounded theory was used. Data were gathered from a sample of 32 undergraduate marketing and management students by combining the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique with in-person interviews. Findings indicate that students do experience several cognitive and affective consequences that are contrary to the broad range of benefits consistently highlighted in academic literature. Findings also highlight prevalent behaviors that motivate the cognitive and affective consequences. The study should give educators reason to seriously consider the extent to which group assignments contribute to or detract from the value of undergraduate business education.

Effects of Collective Efficacy, Teamwork Attitudes, and Experience on Group Project Performance: Comparisons Between 2 Food Science Courses

“…This is consistent with negative bi‐variate correlations in our data between attitude and class year ( r = –0.13, P = 0.02) and amount of task‐related experience ( r = –0.13, P = 0.03). Past research has raised concerns about possible negative cumulative effects of multiple student group projects on student attitudes and learning (Colbeck and others , Gillespie and others , Neu ). In our data, however, number of teamwork experiences was not correlated with attitudes toward teamwork ( r = 0.06, P = 0.30).…”

Students' Attitudes toward a Group Coursework Protocol and Peer Assessment System

“…Neu (2012) argues that behavioural consequences can include misconceptions about how to select groups, divide labour, provide labour and evaluate peers. Additionally, Neu (2012) suggests cognitive consequences such as perceptions of autonomous work, constraint on and disparity in learning, grade boost and injustice, as well as affective consequences including anxiety, frustration, stress and disappointment. Students' attitudes toward group coursework can pose a challenge to the running of assessed group coursework tasks.…”

Social Cues of (Un)Trustworthy Team Members

“…First, (in) equity appeared in a least one reasoning chain for all 38 participants and it appeared multiple times for most. (In)equity deals with the extent to which the contributions of individual team members meet others' expectations in quantity and quality (Neu, 2012). Basically, social categorization is a cognitive process employed to increase the chance that eventual team members will contribute in an equitable way, and reduce the chance of having to "pick up the slack" or take on additional work to deal with inequity when it does occur.…”

“…Very limited published research, however, addresses students' decision making during team formation when they do not have prior knowledge of each other. A recent study provides preliminary evidence that, in the absence of prior knowledge about classmates, some students use social cues-behaviors and traits-to cognitively categorize their classmates and make inferences about them based on the category in which they are placed (Neu, 2012). Interferences are then used to make decisions about who to approach and who to avoid during team formation.…”