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COVID-19 pandemic's movement control order has forced leading public universities in Malaysia to switch their conventional face-to-face lectures to online distance learning. Having less contact with classmates and lecturer, group work to fulfil coursework assessment requires learners adapting themselves to this "new normal" in higher education studies. Maintaining good group work dynamics could be challenging due to distance and conflicts. Therefore, this study aimed to discover concerning issues in online group work using Tuckman's Model. Using a quantitative research approach, this study distributes questionnaires at the end of the semester using Google Forms to purposely select 116 respondents from a public university in Malaysia. These students have been involved in group work for their online distance learning since 2020. The data later were analysed using SPSS and results were presented as mean scores for every research question. The results show teaching presence (mean score = 4.2) is crucial to building students' understanding in the forming stage of group work. In the second stage of storming and norming group work, social presence (mean score = 3.8) is highly favourable by students rather than working alone to ensure interactivity, communication and collaboration within the group. The findings also indicated that in the later stage of performing, cognitive presence (mean score = 4.3) was found to have direct positive impacts on online group work. Students are braver to speak up and defend their ideas in online group work discussions. Despite challenges in group work distance learning, learners could adapt to the new normal in higher learning education studies. Changes and coping strategies are needed to address the findings of this research to improve teaching and learning pedagogy in this post-COVID-19 era. Future research may explore teachers' insights of online group work and cover respondents from cross faculty clusters. Learners' perceptions could also be explored qualitatively.

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