Managing Group Activities
I am a new (and young) instructor, and I have a question about how to keep all of my students involved while in groups. Last week I gave my first in-class group assignment, but it wasn't as successful as I had hoped. I assigned them to groups of 5-6 (there were 5 groups, I have 28 students), and gave them a case study to analyze and questions to answer. I couldn't seem to keep all of the students focused on the assignment. Some of the students were involved in conversations unrelated to the material or simply did not participate in the activity at all.
I made sure to walk around the room the entire time, and had multiple one on one discussions with each group as they worked through the activity. I made sure to involve everyone in the group and asked questions that required them to elaborate on previously given responses. I thought this would help keep them engaged and on track, but when I left the group to go to another, many of them lost their focus.
I would really like to continue group work in the classroom, and do not want to teach a class that is completely lecture-based. Is there something that I can change about my own behavior or in the way I set up the activity that could help to increase the students' motivation for future group activities?
Hi Anne,
This is not uncommon. The key is to have some case studies, games or problems lined up for the students to work through when you have extra time to fill.
Gary
One of the difficulties that I have is when the students report out their results/findings, it takes much less time than I have built into the class time. I end up with too much time to fill at the end.
Jessica, I use groups and case studies quite extensively in all of my classes. One suggestion I have that you may want to consider is to also assign group task roles to each group member:
1. Coordinator: organizes group ideas and suggestions,
2. Researcher: seeks facts/date relevant to the task
3. Orienter – brings group members back to the task when they get off track
4. Consensus Tester – tentatively asks group opinion to find out if the group is
nearing consensus on a decision,
5. Summarizer
6. Secretary (Recorder) – takes minutes or notes, writes reports, serves as the
“group memory.â€
You can also ask each student to rate their classmates at the end of the exercise. In my experience, all of these activities seem to keep all group members energized and accountable throughout the length of the course.
Hi Jessica,
You did all of the right things with your group activity. I would add one other element to the activity. Develop a list of questions for each group. That way they have a specific assignment to complete during the discussion time. You mention you used a case study so I would develop a set of questions for group 1 to answer and a different set for group 2, etc.. Then during the reporting session each set of responses builds on the other to where the case study has been successfully analyzed and responded to.
Gary
