Group work-based learning is encouraged in higher education on account of both ped-agogical benefits and industrial employers’s requirements. However, although a plenty of studies have been performed, there are still various factors that will affect students’ group work-based learning in practice. It is important for the teachers to understand which factors are influenceable and what can be done to influence. This paper performs a literature review to identify the factors that has been investigated and reported in journal articles. Fifteen journal articles were found relevant and fifteen factors were identified, which could be influenced by instructors directly or indirectly. However, more evidence is needed to support the conclusion of some studies since they were performed only in one single course. Therefore, more studies are required on this topic to investigate the factors in different subject areas.