Using student learning groups helps to see who has strengths and weakness, this helps allow them to help each other.
Group dynamics are quite important in anyones career, learning to work with others. Major challenges come from workload distribution within a group and major personality clashes.
Giving an outline of each stage in the groups work to the group will help them stay on task.
Students have the opportunity to apply information from lectures, but even better, they support/reinforce the information with their own experiences. Also, students get involved, they are active and apply the content.
Assisting student groups by sitting down and interacting with them, often helps to clarify the project activity and spark ideas. When a really significant point is brought-up or finding is developed, I like to announce it to the entire class, giving credit to the group, thus allowing the other groups to benefit.
The most significant outcomes will be the learning and experiencing team work; the challenge is to get everyone equally participate and meet the deadline of the assigned project.
I usually start by selecting the member for each group, then I will provide the guidelines for the project, including deadlines.
As each team gets together, I lecture on different ways to approach team work and give examples.
At first students are not excited at all about the project and all say they have had negative experiences in the past. Then they feel at ease, once they get to know each team member and learning that each of them can bring their expertise to the table.
Making each member feel important by pointing out their strengths is definitely very beneficial.
The most significant would have to be the unfair balance of accomplished work per student that can easily come up. One less motivated student will try to pass work onto others.
A checklist of requirements per student should solve this issue.
When setting up learning groups I like to use check points that allow me to ensure that the project is on schedule & correct up to that point before the group can move on to the next check point. Once the check point has been achhieved correctly I will assign a different student to achieve the next check point.
One of the biggest challenges of student groups be it a formal or an informal group, is that many students are themselves opposed to the idea of working in groups. Despite having clearly outlined the work to be covered and ensuring that each member of the team contributes equally I find that students prefer to work individually. However, when the group assignment is one that stretches over a short span of time, then students are more likely to enjoy the group assignment. Also the nature of the assignment makes a big difference in terms of how well the students as a group will take to the assignment and the member of their group.
Work groups meet during class time in order to help keep them on task and team member evaluations are factored into the final grades for the project
Hi William! Thanks so much for your honest comments! Though group work may not be appropriate for every assignment, having students each contribute to a result, held responsible for a portion of the task at hand, and potentially providing feedback to others in the group regarding their work, all combine to affect an important workpalce skill - even in work environments where individual tasks and responsibilities are paramount.
Best wishes for introducing some group activities! Please feel free to visit some other posts in the forums that highlight ways to encourage group effectiveness.
Thanks again,
Jay Hollowell
ED106 Facilitator
Hi Steve! Thanks for your comments! I have found that students take on different roles in the group - some are direct contributors, some summarize, some evaluate and keep the group on course, some collaborate and work at blending alternate points of view. I like the idea of group members completing progress reports, perhaps both on their individual contributions as well as on the group's performance.
Jay Hollowell
ED106 Facilitator
The most significant outcome would be to engage the minds of students who initially had no interest in the class. The enthusiam of other class members can tranfer to non-committed students.
A good teaching method would be to have the students create progress reports and possibly have someone record minues of the group meetings.
LEARNING GROUPS ARE CRITICAL FOR INTERACTION AND LEARNING.
Students who learn as a unit are more likely to not only share information but interact in a way that creates stronger reinforcement of facts and new concepts.
I like to ask them a set of questions that make them think and problem solve before telling them the actual answer to the problem. In this way they become engaged in the process and their curiosity is peaked. They become a part of the solution.
William,
There are some great books on collaborative learning that have some really neat ideas for classroom management and how to even go about selecting groups.
Good luck!
James Stewart
I am sorry to say that I do not use group work in my classes, but I have been thinking that I should. In my field we are always working together, however in class it is a very individual effort. Each student creates their own work and hands it in. For some time I have thought that it would really show students the importants of what they do if someone else in class had to pick up where they left off. I might do this in the near future. It makes them all accountable to each other.
The students learn to be responsible, and get hand-on learning experience.
I like to give my students clear steps to take during in class group projects. I find that if I lay my project sheets in clear steps, then the students will be able to visually see their progress. As I moniter the class, I can also visually see where they are with the assignment. These clear steps often encourage them to stay on task more instead of socializing since it is so easy to visualize.
Hi James! Thanks for your input!
To your point, sometimes systematic search is at odds with the lifelong learning approach if the emphasis is totally on accomplishing a short-term outcome as opposed to a longer-term result.
Systematic search, as a concept and a technique, can be invaluable as an aid to the input, processing, output flow as long as there is, at least, some focus on how concepts and applications can support longer-term goals, given that many of the skills we teach in career education are specific, immediate and sequential.
Just curious, do you think that the input, processing output flow is linear or circular? Can it be multi-dimensional?
Jay
ED106 Facilitator
Hi Donald, this is a good point about the grading aspect - students' hesitations about how the group work will affect individual assessments. I have traditionally included both an individual component and a group component with a student's grade (using the rubric approach).
Jay
ED106 Facilitator
Hi Gary! Points well made! I have found too that clarifying expectations and identified outcomes for group members, and addressing group roles and responsibilities up front can be beneficial to getting the team started down the right path.
Thanks,
Jay Hollowell
ED106 Facilitator
