Making Group Projects More Accessible: Roles, Instructions and Check-Ins

Group projects can offer useful opportunities to exchange ideas and build something together. They can also become confusing when instructions are vague, roles are negotiated informally or the loudest person controls every decision. Making a project accessible starts with the design of the task and the support available to the group.

The aim is meaningful participation in the learning. It is not to make every student communicate in the same way or to assign an autistic student a permanently separate job. This guide offers a practical planning approach for teachers, students and families to discuss and adapt to the class.

Make the purpose clear

Ask what students are meant to learn through the project. Is the shared task a way to investigate a topic, practise a particular collaborative skill or produce a joint response? These purposes can coexist, but they should be named so that students know what matters.

CAST’s guidance on the meaning and purpose of goals recommends making goals explicit and breaking longer aims into shorter objectives. For a group task, use that principle to explain what the group is working towards and what a useful first step looks like.

Show the expected output without implying there is only one acceptable creative solution. Identify any fixed requirements, the available choices and how individual learning will be considered. A student should not have to infer the marking criteria from which classmate seems most confident.

Create roles that allow learning

Roles can make work clearer when they describe a useful contribution and how it connects with others. Examples might include gathering evidence, checking a calculation, assembling a model or coordinating a shared document. Avoid roles that exist mainly to keep one student occupied away from the real thinking.

CAST’s collaboration guidance highlights clear goals, roles and responsibilities, alongside ways to ask for help and share different perspectives. These are design suggestions, not evidence that assigning job titles alone creates an inclusive group.

Discuss students’ preferences and the learning opportunities in each role. A student who enjoys technical work may choose to prepare visuals, but should not be automatically excluded from discussing ideas. Similarly, a student who communicates through typing can contribute to decisions without being assigned only the typing task.

Make communication usable

Choose a reliable place for the task instructions and current decisions. It might be a paper planning sheet, an approved shared document or another accessible format. Avoid letting essential information exist only in a fast-moving informal chat that some group members cannot use.

Offer ways to contribute during discussion. Students might speak, type a suggestion, point to a diagram or prepare an idea beforehand. Build in time to read or hear a contribution before moving to the next decision. A method is not meaningfully available if the group has already decided before the message is considered.

Make changes explicit. If the group changes the topic or divides tasks differently, update the shared record and check that everyone knows. Do not interpret work on an old plan as deliberate non-participation when the change was never communicated clearly.

Keep personal information out of the group agreement unless there is a genuine, agreed reason to include it. Classmates may need to know how to share instructions or allow response time; they do not need a student’s diagnostic history to follow a good working process.

Support disagreement and requests for help

Agree on a way to raise a problem before it becomes personal. A student might say, “I cannot start because I do not know which source we chose,” or use an agreed written prompt. Teach the group to respond to the actual question rather than labelling the person difficult.

Make the decision method visible. The group could compare ideas against the task criteria, ask each person for a view and identify what remains unresolved. A vote may be appropriate in some situations, but it does not automatically resolve an access barrier or make an exclusionary choice acceptable.

Teachers should remain available to address unfair workload, exclusion or disrespect. Collaboration does not mean leaving students to manage every difficulty without support. If a group repeatedly ignores one member’s contributions, changing the seating arrangement alone may not address the underlying problem.

Check progress while change is still possible

A useful check-in asks what the group has learned, what each member is working on and what is preventing the next step. Keep the focus on the task and the working process. Avoid rewarding only visible busyness or a confident spokesperson.

CAST’s action-oriented feedback guidance supports specific, timely comments linked to progress. A teacher can apply that principle by identifying a concrete next action, such as comparing two conflicting pieces of evidence, instead of simply telling the group to cooperate better.

In a fictional example, a group designing a model park splits into research, drawing and construction tasks. Lina types a question about wheelchair access, but the group begins construction without reading it. At the check-in, the teacher helps the group add a short decision review before building. Lina’s question becomes part of the design discussion rather than an ignored comment attached to a finished model.

At the end, invite each student to reflect in a usable format. Ask what they contributed, what they learned from someone else and what would help in the next project. Keep the reflection separate from a popularity contest about which classmates were easiest to work with.

Common questions