What is a Team Assignment?
A Team Assignment is a Packback Writing assignment where a group of students collaborates on a single submission. One grade is applied to the entire team, with the option to adjust individual grades when needed.
Note: During the Beta phase, Team Assignments are available for Originality Reviews only. Team Assignments for Deep Dives will be available in the future.
Creating Teams
You'll need a team set before students can be assigned to teams. You can create a team set before or after creating the assignment, but students won't be able to submit as a team until a team set is added to an assignment. See "Teams in Packback" for instructions.
Enabling the Team Assignment Setting
When creating a new Originality Review assignment or editing an existing assignment, toggle on the Team Assignment (Optional) setting.
- If you already have a team set created, you can select if from the dropdown menu that appears when the Team Assignment setting is enabled.
- If you do not have a team set created yet, you can add it later.
Note: If you enable a Team Assignment, but no team set is added yet, Packback will display a warning on the Manage Assignments page to remind you that the assignment isn't fully set up.
Tips for Facilitating Effective Team Assignments
- Set expectations upfront with your students about how teams will be evaluated and what individual accountability looks like.
- Use additional assignments to create checkpoints — team contract, drafts, and reflections to help reduce social loafing and keep teams on track before the final due date.
- Consider your team size when choosing random assignment options. Smaller teams tend to have clearer individual accountability.