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What is Social Loafing?

Social loafing (or free-riding) is the tendency to put in less work/effort when working in a group project as compared to working alone.

Why does social loafing occur?

Our first thought when we observe social loafing is to assume laziness – the student(s) involved simply want to rest on the work of their teammates.  What other causes might there be?  Harding (2018) suggests that educators consider other possible causes of social loafing:

• Actual or perceived ability to execute the project tasks.
• Schedule conflicts that limit ability to contribute to meetings or projects.

Reducing social loafing

We have already explored some of the strategies that can reduce social loafing. Providing instruction on the purposes of group work, and having students develop their initial team processes can create motivation and accountability to work well on the task. Grouping students effectively (e.g. forming smaller groups, using a thoughtful grouping strategy) also supports more effective group participation.

Another strategy for reducing social loafing is evaluating team process through individual and peer accountability.  If the collaborative process is already a learning objective the project fulfills, this is even more relevant.

Providing formative assessment

Gunawardena et al. (2019) suggest that formative assessment is a key strategy for supporting successful group work.  Both self and peer evaluations are helpful; however, many learners are still developing the metacognitive skills needed to accurately assess their own performance, and may need formative feedback on their evaluations of self and others before completing graded assessments later in the process.  Sources of data that can support formative assessment include:

• Recordings of synchronous group meeting sessions.
• Data from asynchronous discussion logs and planning worksheets
• Synchronous creation of a document (e.g. brainstorming, mind-mapping) that indicates individual contributions and group process.

By providing smaller formative self and peer assessments throughout the process, learners are able to more accurately evaluate their own contributions and those of others.  Additionally, social loafing, if it occurs, can be addressed earlier in the project process.

Strategies for individual and peer assessment

• Self-evaluations (see resources section for an example)
• Peer-evaluations (see resources section for an example)
• Individual journals
• Task inventory (see resources section for an example)
• Asking teams to divide contribution marks between members according to their contribution (e.g. the team receives 100 marks, to be divided according to the contribution level of each member)
• Team journals
• Team check-ins (with you, for formative assessment)
• Scheduling a brief individual verbal interview with each team member to evaluate their team contributions and experiences

Developing criteria for peer evaluations

Consider the following as you develop peer evaluations for team projects.

1. Develop objective criteria (e.g. attendance and punctuality at group meetings, contributes to group discussions, allowed other group members to contribute to tasks/discussions, completes assigned tasks by agreed-upon dates).   Another option is to work with teams to develop their own objective criteria based on their team charter
2. Use peer assessment multiple times throughout the project/semester.  This will provide formative feedback that helps students improve, and allows emerging issues to be resolved.

References