Organizing a learning group
Careful thought should be put into organizing a learning group. If you have a group of 20 students, it is important that you create groups that have multiple types of learners in them, meaning, do not put all the real quick learners in one group, and all the slow learners in another, etc. and maybe establish a group mentor. I perfer the verbage mentor or leader.
Yes, I agree, I like to form random groups...like you, I hve a set of cards I created with matching numbers...but just to keep the students on their toes...the same cards can arrange the group by color! They never know until AFTER they have chosen the cards which one will dictate the groups. That keeps things extremely random & a very nice mixture in each group.
In sociology, I use a different way of grouping students. At the begining of the course, we go on-line & take the TRUE COLORS personality test,
which has the posibility of 4 colors if there are too many students in say the blue group..then I split into 2 blue groups. These groups allow students with the same persoanlity types to work together, which includes acomplishing a task is done in a like way as well. Students LOVE to be in a group in which everyone problem solves ina like way. They say it is the easiest group they have ever been in and EVERYTHING flows!
I agree with this concept, but would like to add a dimension. In my experience, an easy way to avoid bias in group forming is to hand out numbers randomly to the students. For example, I create cards with the numbers 1-5 to a class of 20 students. Then, all the "1's", "2's", etc. are grouped together. At first, students find this to take them out of their comfort zone. However, with repeated trials, they get used to your methodology, and will actually form new friendships and get to know one another.
