Sometimes, despite the team’s efforts, leveraging faculty to deal with difficult team members becomes a necessity. Faculty members do not assign group projects so that Free-Riders can get good grade without hard work or Dictators can push around other students with impunity. Most faculty want students to have a good group experience and are willing to help address and resolve problem behavior on teams.

The first and most important step when leveraging faculty is to make them aware of the problem early enough in the project to make a difference. If a professor does not hear about a problem until the night before the project is due, there is little he or she can do to mediate a difficult situation.

Faculty may use peer evaluations as a tool to discourage problematic behavior. Although this tool can be helpful, if a team waits for peer evaluations to complain about fellow students, it is often too late to curb the poor behavior. At that point in the project, many students have learned how to manipulate the system and avoid penalties.

Sometimes just the threat of faculty involvement is enough to encourage problem students to change their behavior.

A faculty member has more leverage over problem students if the team has clearly documented the problem behavior and their initial attempts to address and resolve the problem. The more a team can provide concrete evidence of problematic behavior the easier it is for a professor to confront and penalize uncooperative students.

Most faculty are willing to give a team member with problematic behavior a lower grade if the evidence is clear and compelling. It is the hope that with proven consequences for problematic behavior, a student will not attempt the same thing on future group projects.