• State expectations clearly. It is critical that you define the objectives and desired outcomes for group projects in advance of group formation. You should anticipate students to have different comfort levels in working with group members. If this is a student's first experience with online group discussions, he or she may adapt slower than those with previous experience.
• Forming online groups. Asking students to form online groups unassisted is a recipe for disaster. Only the most outgoing and self-motivated individuals can accomplish this task without wasting a lot of energy and time. The most efficient approach is for the instructor to create the teams, keeping several factors in mind. First, if you are aware that students share common interests, you may want to team them together. Second, try to keep the teams small, no more than 3 or 4 per group. The larger the group, the more difficult it is to coordinate and collaborate.
• Assigning group roles. You may want to suggest some roles to incorporate into their teamwork. For example, in a team of four, one person might act as a coordinator, making sure everything gets is finished on time and integrated into the final product (e.g., a PowerPoint presentation), another teammate might fill the role of editor, polishing the content from other members, while the remaining teammates draft the various portions of the work. You can assign the role of coordinator for each team or let the groups elect their own. However, it is often best to make the roles a rotating duty, so that each group member gets to experience every role. You should also clearly define the responsibilities and authority that comes with being a group coordinator. The precise role of a group coordinator will likely be determined by the length of the course and the number of projects you assign. For example, if groups are assigned projects that span the entire course, the group coordinator might be responsible for making sure assignments get posted on time and be given the authority to allocate portions of the work among the other group members.
• Supervising the teams. You can give online groups complete autonomy from the instructor or reserve a supervisory capacity for yourself. Your level of involvement can range from consultant to active guidance and intervention to keep students on track. Whatever your level involvement, you should expect conflict within online groups. You can reduce the likelihood of group conflict by establish clear rules of conduct for team interaction in your syllabus's course polices. Advise students in a group to treat each other the way they would like to be treated. In addition, stress the importance of politeness.
• Workload. This is perhaps the most contentious issue for traditional or online groups. It is common for one or more team members to feel that the others aren't carrying their fair share of the load. You may need to intervene, if the situation becomes to volatile. Be sure to let all team members know they can ask for your assistance, if conflict becomes a problem.
• Self-evaluation. A good way to minimize conflict over workload issues is to let group members evaluate each other privately. You can ask group members to email you their assessments of teammates to ensure privacy. Although this can introduce an element of competition, it does provide a recourse for team members that feel the workload was shouldered evenly. Group members will know in advance that will have the chance to assess their fellow teammates' contributions. If you assign multiple group projects, you should require teams to assess themselves after each project and send you the results in a timely fashion. This way, you can detect problems early enough to take action before groups become dysfunctional.
• Scheduling issues. Notwithstanding workload concerns, scheduling time to work together is a major challenge for online groups, especially when using synchronous (real-time) communication tools. Again, keeping group size small can help minimize scheduling problems. In addition, you should alert students to the potential for this occurring, so they can work out mutually agreeable times to collaborate.

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