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Article on Social Loafing in Online Course Teams

Tue, 07/01/2008 - 12:33 — ejp10

I was reading some articles from IRRODL (International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning) and found an interesting article on social loafing in online student teams. As you may or may not know "social loafing" is the act of slacking off in team scenarios, and as we also know, it happens on student teams, even the online ones.

I put my reactions to the article on my TLT blog page but I felt it hit a nerve and explained some team dynamics in a way that I found insightful.

Now I'm curious - do others of you know the theory of social loafing? How do you feel when it happens to you? Do you have advice for instructors?

 

 

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Tue, 07/01/2008 - 20:45 — bxb11

New Term, Same Old Problem

Here's what I do for teams:

The 1st team "project" is to write a MoU for the team itself. They write the rules of conduct, the punishments for loafers, etc. Usually thay have an "expel" clause - you can be voted off the island. Once expelled, you are individually responsible for the project if you want a project grade.

Second, I have the teams self-assess each other and themselves. I take the average score for an individual and that counts as a significant portion of their grade - up to 25%. So if you loaf, your team members can negatively affect your grade.

-- Brett Bixler

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