How Do Students View Group Assignments in Real Estate and Property Development Studies?

It is generally accepted that group assignment tasks provide many benefits to postgraduate real estate students. Consequently, group assignments have become common place in university education. However students often have problems understanding group assignments, which may not be considered by lecturers when designing assessment tasks. This research aims to understand how postgraduate real estate students view group assignments in terms of the benefits they perceive and the problems they have experienced, as well as how group assignments can be improved. The results show that the benefits of group assignments are closely linked to teamwork skills such as: cooperation, communication, interpersonal, negotiation, and delegation while the main problems were ‘different expectation and low quality work done by some members’. It is concluded that while group assignments are important and provide opportunities for students to learn course contents, share ideas, and develop teamwork skills, to avoid problems from arising in group assignment, it is necessary to establish a detail assessment criteria that provides the process and progression monitoring, recognize individual contribution and the final submissions. At the end, the students ’ preference was the combination of group and individual assignments