I find clear instructions and learning goals an important factor in successful group work. The task should also be easily divisible so that every member in the group may have a meaningful job to work with.
When we are working in groups, I try to observe the collaboration of each group and I give support and guidance and try to motivate if necessary. I try to keep each group member on track.
Finally I use assessment in order to keep every student focused in the group work. For example my student work with different kinds of problem-based tasks during the economics course and they write their reports or views or suggestions to a group’s own wiki page in Moodle (learning environment). During the course I guide and observe students’ work and in the end of the course I assess this “wiki work” of each group. This assessment will be part of their course grade. (And if I want, I can check each group members writing activity from Moodles logs.)
But so far on every course there has always been some freeloaders who try to work as little as possible and probably this will be the case in the future as well.
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