Using Micro Management Techniques to Overcome Problems in Group Assignments

Abstract

Group assignments are becoming increasingly popular in education, including Information Technology education. This paper explores problems with the use of group assignments and offers a new strategy designed to keep the good features of group assignments while removing the negative. Many students in Information Technology believe they should have group assignments because they will be working in groups in industry. Staff sometimes justify the use of group assignments as preparing students for team work in industry. However, we suggest that many problems with group assignments can be overcome by making group assignments more closely replicate conditions in industry. We propose a three-phase strategy using management techniques on a small scale.