Effects of Group Work on Attitudes, Trust, and Performance

Given the critical role that group work plays in many educational settings, it is crucial to understand how students form their attitudes about it. Using an in-class field experiment, we study how working in a group affects attitudes towards group work, trust, and performance. We randomly assign students to complete quizzes alone or in small groups, and find that (i) taking quizzes in groups leads to more positive attitudes towards group work and higher levels of trust (ii) students perform better on quizzes if they work in groups (iii) working in groups does not significantly help or hinder performance on subsequent individual exams. The positive impact of group quizzes on performance is particularly pronounced for weaker students who are matched with stronger students. These results point to benefits to assigning group work that have not previously been well-documented