Group work - the influence of formation, working
and feedback on academic performance

The benefits of incorporating an element of group work in higher educational environment is well understood in the educational literature and is considered an important graduate attribute by many professional associations and employer groups. Given the applied bent of the business information systems field, work assigned for group projects is expected to enhance deeper understanding of the concepts and theory. The antecedents of group formation, management and organization of the group working, attitude of members towards group working, involvement of members in the group work, social cohesion members have in the group working, collective intellectual contribution of the members, and the feedback received over time may actually influence the performance outcomes over time. Hypothesizing these factors emerging from the literature, this study, based on empirical data, conceptualised and developed measures for the constructs -- group formation, working effectiveness and feedback, and validated them using empirical data sets. Study found that the involvement of the members in the group, and the social cohesion have stronger influence on the academic outcomes than the task management and skills/knowledge dimensions. Importantly, the study observed that there are significant differences between the groups, and that the groups that have a heterogeneous membership have outperformed the groups that have a more homogenous membership.