Group-based assignments: Member reactions to social loafers

Abstract

Understanding how student teachers undertake their group work may provide a solid foundation for developing essential skills required for the 21st Century teachers, and subsequently help improve group-based assessment in higher education. However, social loafing has been found to interfere with this assessment mode. This article reports on undergraduate student teachers’ processes involved in doing group-based assignments amid the existence of social loafing tendencies amongst group members. It focuses on how students organize themselves in doing the work and their reactions to social loafers. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews involving 18 purposefully and conveniently selected participants from Mkwawa University College of Education in Tanzania. The findings indicated procedures that students observe in doing their group assignments such as the formulation of own group norms and rules. Additionally, it was found that group members employed humanitarian, punitive and threatening approaches as they reacted to social loafers. The article concludes that proper planning for students’ group assignments is important, in which both instructors and students should play their roles accordingly to overcome the problem of social loafing when the use of group-based assessments is indispensable within higher education contexts.