Brent Wilson

Radical Group Formations

A few years back (after 20+ years of teaching) I decided to try a 'radical group formation' technique. I told the students in my class on the first day that for one of the group assignments we would form groups based upon class ranking. The class would be ranked by grades and then starting at the top the first four in a group, the second four in a group, etc.. The ultimate goal here was to force the 'bottom feeders' from riding everyone's coat-tails. If they wanted to pass, they had to step up to the plate and hit the ball. (WOW, how many analogies can you fit in two sentences?!)

The end result was amazing... every single group over-achieved for their 'rank'. In fact, the bottom half of the class scored high C's on their projects... more importantly, they actually learned more than they would have had they been pur into normally distributed groups. THEY HAD TO DO THE WORK FOR THEMSELVES!