Ideas for Group Work Activities With Plymouth University

These example group work activities have been used and collated by colleagues
from Plymouth University interested in group work and problem based learning. So
far, colleagues who have contributed are: members of the PBL network group (Hilary
Neve, Kerry Gilbert, Jill Schwarz, Cathy Coelho, and Priska Schoenborn); attendees
at PBL workshops (Clare Keenan, Christie Robinson). With thanks to Jane Collings and
other colleagues from Educational Development for proof reading and further
suggestions. If you would like to contribute to this document, please contact
pschoenborn@plymouth.ac.uk.

Please note that group work can be problematic and challenging for some students,
especially those examples which include time limits and/or word count limits (e.g.
Articulate; Elevator Pitch). To help students overcome fears and anxiety related to
group work, please refer to our inclusivity guide on ‘Facilitating groupwork’ which
can be accessed here: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/your-university/teaching-and-
learning/inclusivity/how-can-i-be-more-inclusive. We also strongly advise that you
read this Disability website: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/student-
life/services/learning-gateway/disability-and-dyslexia/advice-about-specific-
conditions, where you find ‘Top tips for academic staff’ for the different conditions.

Pedagogical Title of Description of Activity

benefit to Activity
students
Improve Tweet tweet Ask students to communicate or explain
communication something using headlines of 140 characters
skills and raise only.
awareness… This helps them focus on the most essential
aspects and to communicate this effectively to
appeal to a wider (non-specialist) audience.

Elevator pitch Students write a one minute pitch ‘Apprentice’

style about an innovative idea or a project they
are doing to ‘sell it’ to somebody else. It must be
short enough to explain to somebody during a
ride in an elevator, e.g. a sponsor, CEO, or VC.
Similar to the previous activity, it helps them
focus on the most salient bits.

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Pedagogical Title of Description of Activity
benefit to Activity
students
Improve Stake Holder To help students understand and relate to
communication Role Play characteristics, background, or feelings of
skills and raise patients or service users, for example those
awareness whose first language isn’t English, and the
(continued) difficulties around that for patients/service users
and doctors/nurses/physios/paramedics/social
workers, etc. Students adopt unfamiliar
personalities of service user, health professional,
and interpreter. It can bring out students’ own
experiences. For example, a husband
interpreting for his wife can bring in aspects and
issues associated with different cultures as well
as interpreting difficult concepts in clear and
plain language.

For small groups who can sometimes explore

certain concepts in too much detail neglecting
the wider context, role-play helps them to re-
focus by considering the needs of say, the
service users. One member of the group adopts
the role of a patient and asks questions; the
others must answer in clear, simple terms. This
highlights the need to understand broader
concepts and the importance of good
communication skills.

Variations of the previous two examples are

applicable to other subject areas where similar
issues and relationship can be explored, e.g.
those between: customers, employees, software
users, business contacts, the public, and:
professional roles such as software analysts,
marketing professionals, teachers, engineers,
architects and others.

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Pedagogical Title of Description of Activity
benefit to Activity
students
Think more Micro-Macro Students assimilate what they’ve learnt through
critically and Explore self-study by getting active in small groups using
raise the whiteboard. One group starts to explore a
awareness… particular perspective, say what happens at
individual level with HIV. The other group is
prompted to consider the impact of HIV on the
wider population (e.g. why it spreads).
Subsequently, they all discuss together each
other’s work on the two perspectives and add
further detail to the whiteboards/flipcharts. They
then swap groups to add solutions and
preventions to the different perspectives (at
individual and population level). This gets
everybody involved to share information,
making sense of it and taking it forward. It
pushes students beyond what they learnt on
their own.
This can be used in any discipline, e.g.
considering impact of global warming on
individual species vs. wider population / country
/ global; impact of industrial revolution on
individual vs. industry or wider; impact of internet
on individual vs society, etc.

Individual A template with six empty boxes is used. Limiting

Storyboarding students to just six boxes can help to focus their
mind. Individually, they are asked to draw
something to illustrate say a process, procedure,
or experience. It is helpful to students if they are
shown an unrelated example just to highlight
that artistic skills are not important. Once they
have completed their storyboard, they share it
with a peer and explain to each other. They are
learning through the sharing of storyboards. Ask
them to reflect at the end to determine what
they have learnt from the activity. When the
stories relate to people (e.g. health professions,
business, human geography, etc.), drawing
helps students think about it differently e.g.
considering people’s emotions or perspectives
and the reactions of everyone involved.

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Pedagogical Title of Description of Activity
benefit to Activity
students
Think more Tiny Reveals ‘What if’ questions or tiny reveals can be useful.
critically and By changing or introducing new information,
raise awareness learners are encouraged to deepen their
(continued) understanding or apply it to a different situation.
For example, bringing in new characters to a
role-play, a news reader for example;
introducing further information on a patient’s
childhood experience or medical history to a
problem scenario; after a science experiment,
explaining that the lab equipment was faulty or
incorrectly calibrated. Similarly, additional tasks
could be introduced: students have to make a
phone call, write a letter, write a prescription,
run a meeting with local business contacts, etc.

Work effectively Reflect on To encourage all group members to contribute,

in groups… Process… to avoid conflict and free-loading, students
should always set ground rules and while doing
so should consider past group work experiences.
For example, every student to identify one
aspect of group work that they enjoyed in the
past and these positives should be used to
shape the next. It is also worth noting that
ground rules can be revisited throughout at
certain points throughout the year to establish
their usefulness, whether or not they are being
followed, to review and possibly revise.

At the end of each group session students

should provide feedback to each other. For
example a round robin activity where every
student reflects on something they did well and
something they could improve on. It may also
be useful for the tutor to have one-to-one
feedback sessions with every student and to co-
construct individual action points, e.g. for a
quiet student to speak out more; for a dominant
student to listen more and to allow their peers to
contribute; for another less industrious student to
work harder. Consider including an element of
the group learning process in the assessment or
at least for students to feed forward into the
next group work setting.

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Pedagogical Title of Description of Activity
benefit to Activity
students
Work effectively Celebrate Use Celebration chocolates or similar; each
in groups colour/type of chocolate represents a particular
(continued)… criterion related to effective group work or
group work assessment. If a student asks a good
question or provides a good answer which
aligns to one of the criteria, any group member
can award him/her the relevant chocolate. This
is motivating and encourages students to ask
questions; it focuses attention on the process,
positive behaviour and/or work produced.

Triad Students in groups of three take it in turn to be

the speaker, the listener, the note taker. This
requires a bit of time, at least 10 minutes for
each round, i.e. 30 minutes overall.
This gives the quieter students a chance to
speak, and the more dominant ones are
required to stay quiet for a significant amount of
time.

Silent Post question(s) on flipchart. Ask students to

discussion comment/respond on post-its and add to
flipchart/wall. No talking is allowed but students
are asked to continue to comment on each
other’s post-it responses by adding further post-
its. Similar to the triad exercise, this helps to bring
out the voice of the introvert and helps
extroverts reflect and explore more deeply.

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Pedagogical Title of Description of Activity
benefit to Activity
students
Work effectively Rotating Roles For each small group session, a different student
in groups takes on the role of the Chair person. It is
(continued) important that students have sufficient training
in how to chair a group meeting. If present, the
tutor/facilitator may vary where s/he sits (to
keep group members alert) but this should be
on the periphery to allow students to organise
themselves and to run the meeting even if
uncomfortable situations occur. It is useful for
the group to reflect on the process at the end
and to consider if and how the running of the
next meeting can be improved.

Other roles such as note taker or time keeper

can be rotated, too.

Rotating groups may also be appropriate on

occasion to provide students more opportunity
to experience a wider range of roles, situations,
personalities, and tasks. This can also be useful
to mediate potential issues students might
experience within one particular group.

Remember Acting Out / For example, an exercise/role play based on the

difficult Active process of blood clotting; the aim is to ensure
concepts… learning students fully understand and are able to
exercise explain how the clotting cascade works and
how it can go wrong e.g. in haemophilia.
Before the exercise /role play, to activate prior
learning, students write down between them
what they know about this process and what is
involved. In small groups, they take charge and
adopt/assign the roles of the chemical elements
to act out the blood clotting process. It is fun
and they tend to remember it when questioned
about the blood clotting process in subsequent
years.
This approach could be used in many other
situations where there are a number of factors
influencing a process or interaction, e.g. acting
out the process of sending data packets over a
computer network.

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Pedagogical Title of Description of Activity
benefit to Activity
students
Remember Articulate… Play a game of ‘Articulate’ using subject
difficult specific terms. This can be used in any subject
concepts area.
(continued) You have at least two teams of students
competing against each other. Each team
member must take a turn at being a ‘describer’
of a term – the rest of the team are the
‘guessers’. Each turn is time controlled. The
‘describer’ describes the word/term on a card
without saying the word/term or any derivative,
e.g. if the term is ‘social constructivism’ the
‘describer’ can’t use ‘social’, ‘constructivism’,
‘socially’, ‘socials’, ‘constructivist’, ‘construct’,
etc. When the team guesses a term/word, they
get a point. The team with most points wins. This
activity will give equal voice to all students as
well as help them explain key concepts / terms
they need to be familiar with.

Write a quiz In small groups, based on the content of a

particular session, students write quiz questions
for other groups. They must also write the answer
to the questions but may be allowed to write
one question to which they don’t know the
answer. Team pose questions to each other and
highest scoring team wins. Such an activity will
help students assimilate learning and the
questions can be used in formative assessment /
as a revision aid.

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