14 Step 4: Progress monitoring

Once groups have been formed, and if time permits, it would be important to build in check-in meetings to ensure student groups are functioning well and making progress towards completing their assignments. During the first few offerings of our Virtual Exchange, we checked in with students once during the middle of the project. Over the last few years, we found that many student groups only began to meet with each other and work on their projects closer to assessment due dates. Therefore, we began to implement more frequent check-ins with student groups throughout the project. During the Winter 2025 semester, for example, we implemented check-ins at the beginning, middle, and end of the project.

In our experience, we found it helpful to ask students to submit a group evaluation ahead of these meetings and to prepare a short document of their progress and milestones. These submissions allowed us to have more informative and fruitful conversations with our students, so we were better able to support both their group process and assignment progress. If meetings are not possible, it would still be beneficial to ask students to submit these documents, as they will enable you to support your students asynchronously.