The classes that tended to work in groups tended to have more questions that were conceptual in nature, rather than computational. I expect that one of the members of the group was able to deal with the computational part, while no one was able to deal as easily with the conceptual questions. Students not all present, commenting how dumb this is. This seemed to work well in getting students to talk to each other and get all those issues out in the open. Using cubes to illustrate the binary representations for numbers from one to fifteen.
Students work in pairs and create a set of four guessing cards.
Then they play a game. Success seems to partly depend on the students view of learning and grades. Some students like it very much and some are worried about how it will effect their grades feeling that others in their group were not taking the work as seriously as they were. Most of the students seemed to feel comfortable enough to choose groups after any of these activities. Well, not really a 'regular' math assignment, but a math assignment nonetheless.