As a student, I disliked collaborative work for the reasons expressed by Ellen Lupton: violation of personal work schedule and sense of control, frustration over some people making only minimal contributions, and that groups were arbitrarily assigned without regard to skill sets or personalities.
As a teacher, I sometimes forgot about my own experience and didn't make the connection to why students might dislike group work. I would form groups on academic or personal lines without getting input from students and often put people in the same group who had difficulty coexisting.
One of my more successful collaborative projects went that way not only because of the project content but also because of how the groups were formed. The student groups were each supposed to produce a short version of the play "Romeo and Juliet" in a different time period and setting. They were responsible for writing the script, making staging decisions, providing props and costumes, and rehearsing and performing their play. I had about 20 students in the class, so I asked for four volunteers to be group leaders. They were responsible for picking the members of their teams and deciding on a structure for how their group operated. I also created a sheet where each student could assess the work done by his or her teammates and made that a part of their project grade. A couple of groups worked more smoothly than the others, but all of them successfully completed their projects and seemed to have a positive, rather than negative, experience.
Using technology and online tools for collaboration to help students achieve and propagate tacit knowledge is definitely an area where I need to improve. I am hoping to do a group project where students will produce print and online political ads before the end of the year. I would like to use some of the things I learned about collaboration to put into practice for these projects.
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