One of the biggest challenges in having student in groups is fairly distributing the workload among everyone in the group. Another challenge is keeping every member of the group on task.
Corliss,
this is an ongoing challenge. I add a group feedback/peer report grade component into my group projects. It's not the magic cure-all but can help some with accountability.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
Andre,
this is a great way to assign the student groups. Once this pattern is set it can be used as a teaching tool on forming groups.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
One of the problems of group study and assignments is controlling each member of the group participation and timeliness of the completion of their part of the project. Students will complain if they feel a group member is not being responsible and doing their fair share.
One of the biggest challenges of having students work in groups is insuring that group members are sharing the responsibilities and workload. Quite often, one or two members do the majority of the work while the rest just sit back and "coast". As an instructor, you must walk a fine line between micro-managing the group and making sure all participants are on track.
Sherry,
this is true and we can use groups to help our students learn how to work through these differences & to truly listen to the opinions of others.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
The diversity of the student group is important because the instructor does not want one person doing "all the work" and essentially "carrying" the rest of the group. Prior to assigning groups, note should be taken to gauge individual personalities in order to form more effective groups. This is a benefit to all the students collectively.
Letting students pick their own groups, instead of choosing the groups as a teacher. I feel we can sense what each group needs, to many leaders can be bad mix.
I think group learning can sometimes be a distraction, depending on your dynamics of the class. You may have to many "take charge" people and the balance may not work well
Lisa,
good question. I think it can be valuable for the stronger to help the weaker, however you want to make sure that they don't feel like they are doing your job or that the weaker students are not carrying the weight. To me this requires monitoring to maintain that balance between the stronger helping the weaker & the weaker riding the coattails of the stronger.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
This can also be challenging for the strong students to feel like they are teaching the weaker ones. How do you deal with that issue?
One of the biggest challenges is creating groups thqt divide the students appropriately. I find it works best to include a diverse array of students in these groups (i.e. a reserved student, an outgoing student, and student who doesn't have the best attendance, etc.).
Kimberly,
these are definitely challenges of the groups. As far as size goes, I personally like the 3-5 number which makes it harder for anyone to "hide" & not participate.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
The hardest thing in a technical setting is getting all group member participations some times.
One of the biggest challenges I found of being in a group is participation. If the the group is too large then you run into a good possibility of leaving somone out of the group. This may not occur intentionally, but you may have a member that prefers to stay in the background and will not volunteer for any one particular piece.
A second challenge is time management. Sometimes members will procrastinate or drag their feet about getting information in on time or ahead of schedule. This can run the risk of putting the group either behind schedule or scrambling at the last second.
Adrienne ,
thank you for bringing up a challenge that I don't believe we've addressed before. I think the ice-breakers are good; I would also suggest seeing if any of the students have another student in the class that they already know. If they've been in classes with them previously & have a good relationship it might be good to have them in the same group.
Dr. Ryan Meers
I am not sure if other instructors have this problem, but some of our students have learning disabilities that make social interaction very anxiety provoking. I would love some input on ways to get these students more involved in group discussions. I know that using ice-breakers helps but again, some individuals are like clams and just close up.
Kathleen ,
these are all common complaints. For some the response is that they really need to learn to work in groups as that is where much of the work environment is today. As for the comment about learning from a professor; then they should be willing to submit to the greater expertise of the prof & if he/she thinks a group is best then that is what we go with.
Dr. Ryan Meers
I paid my tuition to learn from a professor, not to have to work with my classmates, who don't know as much."
"Our group just isn't working out."
"Students won't want to work in groups."
"Students won't work well in groups."
"If I do group work, I won't be able to cover as much material during the semester as I do when I lecture."
One of the biggest challenges is getting the students to stay on task. They tend to like to socialize if they can. I think the idea of breaking the up in different groups from different areas of the classroom will help avoid this.
