Hi Rob! These are all excellent observations and you're right about the challenges, particularly the student who may dominate the group and the student who does not make any significant contribution or carrry his or her weight in group effort. I have found, as you referenced, that helping the group to establish clear ground rules about the roles and responsibilities of team members, plus making sure that your expectations of tasks, learning objectives and outcomes are also clearly communicated, help in the process. Sometimes a dominant personality needs to be privately and professionally reminded that other group members must have a chance to contribute and express their thoughts and opinions. Usually, a group leader will surface (if you haven't assigned one) where the rest of the group defers a great deal of direction; when this happens, I have often had to remind the leader that "shared leadership" is important - in other words, another member of the group may very well assume the leadership role, even temporarily, because of their particular experience with, or knowledge about, the topic at hand. For those who are not contributing, often peer pressure affects a result, but the instructor may have to approach those participants privately about the level of their contributions. Many instructors, when evaluating group work, provide both an individual grade and group grade, based on a percentage, to help balance the result. Some instructors use rubrics where how a student interacts with the group and how much he or she carries responsibilities are part of the evaluation process. Personally, I have stayed away from group members themselves evaluating each other due to differences in personalities, etc. As to your question about the student who simply does not want to work on the team, of course the workplace values and requires teamwork, yet the student who prefers to work alone may not be purposely causing a challenge, or even a personality conflict with the others, it may simply be a preferred learning/working style. Some people just prefer to work alone and, even if made to work in a group, will not be effective. If this person is pulling the group down though, then the instructor's intervention through a private conversation with that student may be necessary. Otherwise, that student might consider completing a part of the project independently, then offering it to the group for review, or perhaps reidentifying that student's role might help - for example, students who do not like to work in groups are not good contributors, but they may be excellent in other functions such as recorders of group activities, summarizers of group efforts or pulling group work together for the final product. I might suggest collaborating with that student about what he or she could best offer the group under the circumstances, but not push the student to participate. Hope this helps. Thanks again for your valued comments! Jay Hollowell ED106 Facilitator