Collaboration Policies
Having and maintaining clear policies on permitted collaboration among students facilitates students being able to experience the myriad benefits of learning from peers and others in their class in order to deepen and enrich their learning and understanding of the content, while maintaining clear boundaries around academic integrity. The importance of pair, group, and individual work should be reflected in these policies and also in grade-weighting.
Below we've provided policy options, as well as rationale for using each of them—or not. Feel free to use the language below in your syllabus, and adapt as necessary.
Open Collaboration Policy
Built-In Collaboration
Collaboration Permitted on Specific Assignments Only
No Collaboration Permitted
Open Collaboration Policy
Students may collaborate as frequently or infrequently as they want on all assignments.
Sample Syllabus Policy: "Collaboration is absolutely allowed in this course. I leave it to you to decide whether or not it will be helpful to work with other students on your various class projects. In the work world, we often have to make a judgment call about whether to involve others or not, and this class will give you the opportunity to experiment with this."
Potential Additions: "Dealing with issues when working in teams is a natural part of the process. I’ve provided some resources on Canvas about how to resolve conflicts in teams and I encourage you to try to work out team issues as a group first. However, if anything comes up that goes beyond the scope of normal teamwork hiccups, please email me straight away."
"Peer review of each individual’s contribution effort will be collected anonymously in every group and will make up a portion of your grade. Please set community guidelines at the beginning in order to establish expectations and divisions of labor."
"Collaborative note-taking will be used throughout this course. One document will be shared with you and you can all take running notes, add in examples and anecdotes etc. You will all have access to this document. If for some reason, you’d rather take your own notes, that’s entirely acceptable. The collaborative notes will still be available to you."
| Rationale For | Rationale Against |
|---|---|
| Gives students considerable agency. In-class collaboration and collaborative coursework has been shown to be related to improved student performance and improved classroom climate. Students working together on assignments and coursework can allow for students to support one another’s learning and benefit from examples they may not otherwise get access to. It also exposes students to the opportunity to learn from and practice the skills of team-building and co-working which are needed in almost all professions. | Without clear guidelines on how to work collaboratively and ensure balanced contribution, some students may end up doing more work than others. (Peer review and ‘issues’ policies can help mitigate some of this—examples below.) Having no individual assignments may also mean that students do not get a good sense of how they are performing individually in the class or what knowledge gaps they may be experiencing. Without guidance, students may be unsure whether to work in groups or individually. |
Built-In Collaboration
Many assignments use collaboration and group work as part of their design, and these expectations are outlined in assignment instructions.
Sample Syllabus Policy: "The nature of this course requires a collaborative work environment. Given our focus, all assignments must be conducted collaboratively. Some will be assignments in pre-assigned groups (on Canvas) and others will be randomized. Please remember to include the names of all group members on each submission."
Potential Additions: "Dealing with issues when working in teams is a natural part of the process. I’ve provided some resources on Canvas about how to resolve conflicts in teams and I encourage you to try to work out team issues as a group first. However, if anything comes up that goes beyond the scope of normal teamwork hiccups, please email me straight away."
"Peer review of each individual’s contribution effort will be collected anonymously in every group and will make up a portion of your grade. Please set community guidelines at the beginning in order to establish expectations and divisions of labor."
"Collaborative note-taking will be used throughout this course. One document will be shared with you and you can all take running notes, add in examples and anecdotes etc. You will all have access to this document. If for some reason, you’d rather take your own notes, that’s entirely acceptable. The collaborative notes will still be available to you."
| Rationale For | Rationale Against |
|---|---|
| In-class collaboration and collaborative coursework has been shown to be related to improved student performance and improved classroom climate. Students working together on assignments and coursework can allow for students to support one another’s learning and benefit from examples they may not otherwise get access to. It also exposes students to the opportunity to learn from and practice the skills of team-building and co-working which are needed in almost all professions. | Without clear guidelines on how to work collaboratively and ensure balanced contribution, some students may end up doing more work than others. (Peer review and ‘issues’ policies can help mitigate some of this—examples below.) Having no individual assignments may also mean that students do not get a good sense of how they are performing individually in the class or what knowledge gaps they may be experiencing. |
Collaboration Permitted on Specific Assignments
Students may collaborate on specific assignments, as outlined by the instructor.
Sample Syllabus Policy: "Collaboration is crucial to the learning process and our course’s objectives. In-class assignments and larger assignments on canvas will specify whether the work should be done collaboratively, in pairs, or individually. Please be intentional that if a submission should be done individually, that you submit only that which is exclusively your work (with appropriate citations of course). For collaborative assignments, you will be randomly placed in groups unless otherwise specified; please remember to include the full name of each group member on assignments. " (As above)
| Rationale For and Against |
|---|
| The pros and cons of this policy correspond with the pros and cons of the above and below policies, depending on whether a given assignment is collaborative. |
No Collaboration Permitted
Students may not collaborate on any assignments, all course work is to be completed individually.
Sample Syllabus Policy: "Your performance in this course is based entirely on individual contribution. Any work completed with others or by others and submitted as your own will be considered a violation of academic integrity and referred to the Honor Council."
| Rationale For | Rationale Against |
|---|---|
| Simple and clear policy. All student work will be specifically their own—reducing any grading ambiguity. | All students will miss out on the known benefits of group work both for learning gains and also teamwork skill development. The faculty member may end up policing this throughout the semester to ensure all work in individual, which is time-consuming and challenging to verify in most cases. |
