Team Games
How can you best avoid an alpha situation in group learning?
Scott,
this is a great idea to help keep the groups moving & especially to keep one person from dominating.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
with one of the group projects I do, I will get someone who wants to dominate the group once in a while. The groups are seated at round tables with four people to a table. Each position has a specific task. When I pick up on on this I tell everyone to move one seat clockwise, repeating this every half hour.
There may be times when you want an "alpha" situation so this can be pointed out to the individual if I'm trying to teach self-awareness & the value of listening to others' opinions.
Rotating roles is an excellent idea. I have also assigned people who are not traditionally leaders a task and had it be successful. Like all things, it depends on the group and activity.
Monitoring the group is one way, also assigning each person a topic and making them accountable for their part.
I try to create games where each individual must do the activity independently first then share what they did with a group. This way,they have attempted to exercise what they know first and learn from others as they continue the game.
Mary,
learning games can be a great way to solidify the concepts.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
I tell my students up front that this is a team effort and that everyone is a winner in my class. I do give our "prizes" at the end but everyone gets the same treat just for participating and acting appropriately during the team game.
I do like doing projects that one is in charge and working together, sometime this encourage everyone to work harder for they like to be the one in charge
rotate the job of team leader every day
I agree using team games can be fun and rewarding however, the student that has not did read or focused on the assignment really shows.In my expereince they score very low on the exam and alarm goes off in my head, it's then time to unroot the cause for failure or lack of effort on student part.
Assigning each person in the group specific responsibilities, which require similar level of importance. Monitoring groups to assess the progression
Great idea. Hopefully keeps the Alpha's biting their tongues.
Jo,
yes I think a key to these activities is the grouping of students.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
Hi,
I recently played the powerpoint Jeopardy game to enhance a pre-test learning activity. I placed the students in two groups of learners. This type of grouping allowed all students to participate in the game, and have FUN!
Jo Moon
Rhonda,
this is a great idea. I really like the idea of assigning roles as it will help everyone to know what is expected of them & how to function within those expectations.
Dr. Ryan Meers
In an effort to avoid an alpha situation you could assign everyone in the group a role to play which will give everyone the opportunity to participate.
While the group activity is going on circulate the room and listen to the discussions intervening as necessary making sure everyone has the oppotunity to participate.
Bridget,
this is a great strategy to maximize the student groups.
Dr. Ryan Meers
I honestly like to seperate the "alpha" students to seperate groups if I can. Then i make sure that each student has their own specific assignment so that, hopefully, the apha in each group cannot take change and give the other students time to learn and engage equally.
