Efficacy of Group Work in the Online Platform: An Exploration of Multicultural Undergraduates’ Attitudes in Online Academic Writing Classes

Group work in online classes can be a challenging task for both teachers and students. Teachers need to make sure that the group task is designed carefully to achieve its learning objectives, and students need to learn how to work efficiently as members in a group to achieve their targets and meet deadlines. This paper addresses the efficacy of group work in academic writing online classes, and it aims at exploring multicultural students’ attitudes towards working in groups in online academic writing classes. Fifty-nine students were surveyed using a Likert-scale survey, from which five students were interviewed using semi-structured interviews to explore their attitudes towards group work in the online writing classes. The findings revealed that students generally had positive attitudes towards group work in online academic writing classes; however, some students reported that technical issues caused problems at times. Results also revealed that the benefits of this experience outweighed the disadvantages. The study’s findings can be useful for practitioners and curriculum designers as they shed light on the benefits of group work in online academic writing classes and the challenges students may face during these classes