Introduction

 Scholarship is a collective enterprise.  As scholars, we exchange ideas and insights, swap citations and circulate papers among our colleagues for comment.  We collaborate on joint projects, submit our work to peer review and gather together at academic conferences and workshops.  Yet, in the assignments we give our students, we often perpetuate the myth of the lone scholar, toiling late at night in the solitude of a library carrel.  We do this by demanding that students undertake the difficult task of discovery alone, without the aid of their peers.

 This bias toward individualized modes of instruction is deeply ingrained.  Students are encouraged to consult instructors or written texts for ideas and inspiration, but seldom one another.  The need to assess performance on an individual basis leads instructors to discourage or forbid student collaboration on exams, writing assignments or research projects.  This focus on individual achievement is, of course, both valuable and essential.  Yet traditional teaching methods too often ignore the social dimensions of learning.  Group projects can raise student interest and motivation while furthering objectives that are not easily addressed on an individual basis.

Pros and Cons of Groups Projects

 Collaborative projects offer a number of potential benefits.  Students may be prompted to discuss course topics outside of the classroom, an activity that is all too rare on most campuses.  Participants learn to consider the views of others and to negotiate differences, challenges they will often face in future work environments where team decision-making is the norm.  Students benefit from sharing ideas and pooling knowledge.  They also discover that they are not alone in experiencing gaps in understanding.  Group projects can help to counter the isolation students often experience in more conventional learning environments.  Shy or detached students are sometimes drawn out of their shell in this way.  For most students, learning becomes more enjoyable when combined with social interaction.

 Group projects are, of course, not free of potential pitfalls.  Indeed, the problems that can arise are many:  inequitable burdensharing within the group, clashes of personality among students, fears on the part of the better students that their grades will suffer from relying upon the efforts of those less talented, difficulties in coordinating schedules and the considerable time demands that often accompany group efforts.  Some of these drawbacks are inherent to collaborative projects and must be weighed against the benefits.  But most can be minimized through careful attention to project design.

 Group projects come in many shapes and forms.  The discussion below describes four types: simulation games, briefing paper teams, peer review groups and reading groups.   I have used the first three in my own classes and have found each particularly appropriate for teaching about international relations.  The final example is provided by Steven F. Jackson, an instructor in comparative and international politics at Rollins College.

Simulations

 The teaching of international relations has traditionally centered around textual analysis.  Group simulation games provide a useful complement to written sources by allowing students an opportunity to learn by doing.   Simulations are particularly useful at rendering concrete and immediate ideas or concepts that many students otherwise find abstract or distant.   In this sense, simulation exercises serve as the social science analogue of the lab project.

 I have used two simulations in my classes.  The first is a popular strategy game called Diplomacy.    Using a map loosely configured to represent pre-World War I Europe, Diplomacy pits up to seven nations, represented by individual players, against one another in a contest of expansion and survival.    Unlike traditional war games, which emphasize tactical military skills, Diplomacy places a premium on alliance behavior.  Success depends upon a player's ability to choose allies carefully and to negotiate various forms of mutual support.  This accounts for the title of the game, which emphasizes statecraft rather than war.

 Diplomacy depicts a hyper-realist world in which conflict is pervasive and inevitable, power and conquest are the sole objectives of states, and cooperation is undertaken only at the expense of third parties.  The game is thus useful at illustrating certain realist concepts, such as anarchy, balancing and bandwagoning.  Yet it can provoke discussion on the limits of realism if students are asked to consider what the game leaves out and to analyze the assumptions built into its design.  Diplomacy also provides opportunities for considering the effects of geography on strategic choice, the consequences of backstabbing or reneging on agreements and the merits of various techniques of negotiation (e.g., threats, bribery, backscratching, deception, etc.).  In my class, students play the game twice for four hours at a sitting before writing an analytic paper that explores one or more of these themes.

 As a counterpoint to the stark realism of Diplomacy, my World Politics class plays a simulation called Nations.  Developed by Michael Herzig, a teacher at Edina High School in Minnesota, Nations allows for a mixture of cooperation and conflict and thus better illustrates liberal theories of international relations.   Although states still seek relative advantage and leaders are expected to promote and defend their country's basic values and interests, the game also builds in rewards for cooperative, problem solving diplomacy.

 Nations also differs from Diplomacy and many similar games by providing a contextually richer international scenario.  Collectively, the seven nations are presented with a diverse set of international problems and disputes.  A variety of international phenomenon are depicted: trade, resource cartels, economic sanctions, terrorism, propaganda campaigns, espionage, war, and treaty-making.  Because each nation has a distinct political, economic and cultural makeup, Nations also helps to illustrate the linkages between domestic and international politics.

 Nations invites students to reflect upon a number of important questions: Are some types of states more aggressive than others?  Do the potential benefits of economic interdependence serve to dampen political rivalry?  Which is the more potent source of influence - hard power (military capabilities, raw materials, industrial strength) or soft power (information, propaganda, culture, negotiating skill)?

 The two games described above share with other simulations a number of similar virtues.  Students are thrust into decision-making environments which emulate in some important respects the circumstances faced by actual policy-makers.  Students are presented with a number of challenging tasks.  They must prioritize interests, establish objectives, evaluate threats, make judgements about relative power, weigh the costs and benefits of various policy options and anticipate the reactions of other parties.  Typically, these tasks must be carried out under conditions of limited information and perceptual ambiguity.   In some games, decisions are subject to internal bargaining among members of a team prior to negotiations with other states.  Students gain valuable opportunities to reflect upon the ways in which psychological and interpersonal dynamics affect the quality and outcome of such interactions.
 Diplomacy and Nations represent only two of the many simulations available to instructors.  Some are discussed in the journal Simulations and Games.  Others are described in a series of articles that have appeared in the Foreign Policy Analysis Notes, published by the Foreign Policy Analysis Section of the International Studies Association .

Foreign Policy Briefs

 In the most recent version of my course on American Foreign Policy, teams of students prepared foreign policy briefing papers for consideration by a fictional President.  Groups of four to five students each tackled a different foreign policy problem, including Haiti, the Bosnian crisis, weapons proliferation, international drug trafficking, aid to Russia, the future of NATO, defense spending, NAFTA, U.S.-Japanese trade and the merits of the War Powers Act.  Since the course was offered during the Fall of 1992, two groups provided strategic political advice to Presidential candidates Bill Clinton and George Bush on the crafting of their foreign policy platforms for the campaign.  Prior to dividing the class into groups, students were allowed to rank order their issue preferences.  Virtually all students were assigned to groups reflecting their first or second choices.

 The briefs ran between eight and ten pages.  Each followed a pre-established format, including a statement of the problem, relevant background information, a detailed discussion of various policy options, including the merits and demerits of each, and a final recommendation to the President.  In crafting their advice, students were asked to consider various constraints such as domestic political reaction, budgetary considerations and the likely responses of other states.

 After the deadline, each brief was placed on reserve in the library where they could be read by other class members.  Each team made a brief oral presentation to the class followed by a question and answer period.  In this class, the quality of the briefs was generally high, the advice often creative and the in-class discussion vigorous.

 I provided each team with extensive written comments on their briefs, listing both strengths and weaknesses.  Each brief received an overall grade.  In group projects of this sort, students often worry that negligence on the part of their group partners will result in an inequitable distribution of burdens or that their own grade will suffer if the contributions of others to the overall project lack in quality.  To lesson these concerns, I asked each student to fill out a detailed questionnaire in which they assessed their own contribution to the group as well as those of other members.  Using these evaluations, I adjusted individual grades upwards or downwards from the group norm.

 The foreign policy briefing project served a number of useful purposes.  Students were able to delve deeply into an issue of interest to them.  The experience of sifting through options brought home the complexity of foreign policy choice and the array of constraints that policy-makers must take into consideration.  Most of all, participants learned much about the messy but essential process of crafting a consensus among initially divergent views and opinions.

Peer Review Groups

 Students in my Senior Seminar on International Relations Theory write seven three to four page papers during the term.  Each paper is addressed to one or more of the three to five articles that are assigned for any given week.  Students are asked to offer a critical evaluation of the author's thesis.  This may take several forms:  critical comments on the argument or the supporting evidence, a comparison with other readings, consideration of the policy implications of the theory, etc.

 Complete rough drafts must be brought to class on the day the reading is discussed.  We meet once a week for three hours.  In the first half of each period, the class meets together as a whole.  I begin by placing the week's readings in context, drawing comparisons and raising critical issues.  The remainder of this segment of the period is spent in general discussion.  During the second half of the class, students meet in peer review groups of four to five apiece.  Those who have written papers for that week distribute copies to the remainder of the group.  Group members jot down marginal comments as they read each paper.   Once all of the papers have been read, the group discusses each in turn.

 Although some of the feedback addresses mechanical or organizational problems, I ask students to focus most heavily on substantive issues.  In the best groups, the feedback period provides an opportunity for students to air differences of opinion or interpretation.  Students also ask authors to clarify vague statements, to offer examples of abstract points, to tighten connections among different arguments and to shore up or abandon weaker claims.

 Each author collects the draft copies from other members of the group and is given two days to prepare a final revised draft.  I collect the first drafts along with the final paper as a means of checking to make sure that students are bringing full drafts to the initial class meeting, rather than mere outlines.  Also, I often browse through the written comments on each draft as a way of evaluating the quality of the feedback authors are receiving.  I discuss with students the kinds of comments that are typically most useful to authors, emphasizing that they should seek to be critical in a constructive way.  I have found that students are more likely to be too gentle than too harsh.  I point out that students do one another a disservice if they flinch from identifying serious and obvious flaws.  I also emphasize to authors that they must use their own judgment about which advice they choose to embrace or ignore.

 The peer review groups serve a number of positive functions.  Students arrive in class much better prepared when they have not only read but also written on the assigned readings.  This greatly improves the quality of the general discussion.  The feedback authors receive from their peers is often helpful.  Even more valuable, however, is the opportunity students gain to read and critique the work of other students.  When a student is forced to evaluate the work of a peer, he/she begins to look at his/her own writing in a different way.  After identifying certain persistent problems in the work of others, one becomes more sensitive to similar shortcomings in one's own efforts.  The process of revising one's own work also reinforces a valuable habit and prevents students from turning in papers written at the last minute with little thought.  In most cases, the quality of the papers improves noticeably as the term goes on and the gains are most evident in the cases of the weaker students.

 Peer review groups also serve an equalizing function and help to draw out otherwise quiet students.  During the general discussion, some students speak up often while others participate infrequently if at all.  The structure of the peer review process leaves students with little choice but to become involved in give and take.  The quieter students often feel more comfortable speaking up in a smaller group in any case and the necessity of commenting on papers written by their peers requires at least a minimal level of engagement.

 During the peer review segment of the class, I typically wander from group to group responding to inquiries, offering clarification of various points and, occasionally, mediating debates.  Students have a second chance to raise questions that did not at first occur to them during the earlier discussion or which they hesitated to raise in front of the whole class.  Discussions within the group often go beyond or extend those which took place in the full class meeting or address issues not considered earlier.  Although I encourage openess and free debate at all times, students sometimes feel freer to express views at odds with my own in unsupervised discussions with their peers.

Reading Groups

 The final example discussed here has been provided by Steven F. Jackson of Rollins College.  Drawing upon techniques used at the University of Michigan Business School, Jackson organizes his classes into reading groups of four to seven students apiece.  The principal purpose of these groups is to reinforce an ethic of collective responsibility for learning.  Students learn to depend upon one another while also developing a strong stake in the success of other members of the group.

 Jackson purposefully places responsibility for accomplishing the assigned readings on the group rather than each individual.  The amount of reading Jackson assigns is in fact several times greater than the norm and far more than any individual student could hope to digest alone.  By dividing up the reading list, however, the group as a whole can easily cover it all.  Each member of the group is responsible for briefing other members on their particular portion of the reading list.  This takes place in group meetings outside of class where each member summarizes their own readings orally and the group as a whole exchanges written notes.

 Each student in the group is expected to acquire a basic grasp of the entire reading list, including those articles read only by other group members.  Periodically during the term, Jackson administers a short quiz to a randomly selected member of each group.  The quiz asks these students to summarize the topic and central argument of one or more articles drawn from the reading list.  The grade received on this quiz applies not only to the student who actually took the quiz but also to each of the other members of that student's reading group.

 One objective Jackson has in mind is to encourage students to take responsibility for one another's education.  Stronger students have particularly compelling reasons to aid academically weaker members of the group.  This design also puts peer pressure to positive use.  Students are likely to work harder than they normally might because their status within the group depends upon their willingness to live up to group expectations.  Another benefit, obviously, is that students become familiar with a much broader literature than would be possible on their own.

 Just as importantly, however, Jackson wants to prepare students for a world of social interdependence where individual and group goals are closely intertwined and where success depends heavily upon effective teamwork.  These ideas are, of course, largely unfamiliar to most undergraduates who have been raised on the myth of rugged individualism that is so central to American culture.

  Not surprisingly, many students are initially skeptical about Jackson's reading groups, although most come to appreciate both the process and the results by semester's end.  Jackson has found greater success with this technique in small, upper level classes, where there is typically a narrower range of abilities and interests, than in large introductory level courses.  Jackson also builds in several safeguards designed to lesson student anxieties.  The group quizzes, for instance, account for only ten percent of each student's total grade.  This is enough to prompt students to take the entire exercise seriously, but not so much that students must become unduly alarmed if a fellow group member performs poorly on one of the quizzes.  Also, Jackson allows each group to jettison an uncooperative member midway through the term if that individual has failed to keep his/her commitments to the others.  The abandoned member may latch on with another group or attempt to keep up with the reading list on his/her own.

Conclusion

 This article has discussed only a few of the many varieties of group projects that can be profitably employed in undergraduate education.  Most require careful planning and involve a greater level of complexity in implementation than traditional teaching techniques.  Moreover, instructors can expect an initial degree of student anxiety and resistance in response to group assignments, especially where formal grading is involved.  Yet, as most students quickly come to appreciate, the potential benefits of collaborative learning are many and the extra effort required of both students and instructors is often amply rewarded.

References

CALDWELL, D. (1991) "The 1990 Middle East Crisis: A Role Playing Simulation." Foreign Policy Analysis Notes, Spring/Summer: 13-15.
LAMY, S. (1990) "Simulation in Foreign Policy Instruction." Foreign Policy Analysis Notes, Spring: 13-15.
LICKLIDER, R. (1990) "Simulation in Foreign Policy Instruction." Foreign Policy Analysis Notes, Summer, 9-11.
MORENO, D. (1992) "Potential U.S. Intervention in Peru: A Simulation." Foreign Policy Analysis Notes, Summer: 4-5.