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...Home > Services > Newsletter > Lizard Index > 2002-2003 Issues > Group Work Revisited

Group Work Revisited

Holly Arrow, Psychology, continues to study groups and uses group work in her teaching. This is a follow up to her winter term 2000 interview with TEP—Risky Business?: Exploring Group Learning.

Why do you think many instructors are reluctant to try group work in their classes?
We all feel more comfortable with methods that are familiar. Students may resist group work because they have had bad experiences with groups or because they are uncomfortable having less control over their experience in the class. The same may be true of the instructor. Instructors may also be reluctant to reduce the amount of content covered in order to provide time for group work, which often allows students to process material in more depth.

In designing group assignments, how do you ensure that the group activity will not be perceived as busy work or something that an individual could easily do by him/herself? Can you give some examples?
I select assignments that focus on concepts or procedures that I have already identified as key concepts or skills for the class. I explain my reasons for using groups to the students. I try to choose assignments that either cannot be completed by an individual or that would not provide as thorough a learning experience if completed individually.

Examples: Discussion tasks are always a good choice, especially when people's opinions or perspectives are likely to differ. Discovering how others see things differently, and then looking for common themes, requires discussion. Making groups responsible for reporting back to the full class helps keep the discussion on track because they will need to be ready to report.

In one class I show videotape clips that the classroom groups must discuss and analyze. They look at the clip, discuss it, and then watch it again. Each person typically notices and remembers a different subset of events. In their discussion people realize they didn't watch as closely as they needed to, and they watch the clip more closely the second time to see whose interpretation is correct. This kind of task mirrors the kind of situation in which we naturally seek out input from others—when we want help interpreting what we observed. This type of exercise also highlights how incomplete their own observations are and how much of their interpretation involves inferences and assumptions that others may not share. I also use this task as a reference point when discussing reliability issues in studying group interaction.

If people are learning new skills - for example, a new way to analyze data using a computer program--students typically grasp some but not all of the explanation of how they should proceed. Working together, they can usually figure things out by sharing what they did understand with others. This lessons the load on the instructor or GTF, who can't help all the confused people at once, and makes it easier for students who don't want to reveal ignorance to the teacher, but feel comfortable asking a peer.

For some teachers a barrier to doing group work is the time it takes to teach students the group skills they need to be productive together. Teachers feel they need to sacrifice the content of the course in order to do this. Is that true?
I'll tackle the second point first. If you define the content of a course by how much the instructor covers, the answer is "true," you must sacrifice content. If you define the content of a course by how much the students actually learn deeply and retain, the answer is "false," because they will actually hold on to more content six months after the course has ended.

Now for the first point. Rather than teach group skills, a better approach is to establish rules for interaction and then structure the tasks and groups so that a high level of social skills isn't a prerequisite for effective group work. It's important to use an appropriately sized group for the task. For in-class group discussions, for example, make it a rule that everyone has to talk, but then also make the groups small enough that it is relatively easy to follow the rule. Three to four people is ideal. As groups get larger, the most talkative people typically contribute about the same amount as they would in a smaller group, but contributions by the others drop off precipitously. It also gets harder to hear others over the din of other groups talking. Your own experience can instruct you here. Pay attention to the naturally occurring conversation groups that form at social events. Two to four people is typical.

For group work outside of class, the best size for coordinating work effectively is two. Two people can usually schedule meetings without much trouble, but often becomes more difficult with more persons, and the likelihood of problems increases. Again, consult your own experience and you'll discover it matches this guideline. Larger groups can work if the members don't need to meet outside of class but instead can do their part individually and coordinate and assemble their inputs via e-mail, without having to meet in person. You should still set aside some class time for them to touch base and coordinate work.

Do you use technology to facilitate group work? If so, how do you use it?
I use Blackboard for all my classes, and it is useful in several ways. First, the discussion board is a place for all students to communicate together as members of the larger class group. Second, if you enable the e-mail function, students can easily send e-mails to other group members by finding and checking them in the list. I can do the same if I want to give feedback to just the members of a particular group. If you have permanent groups, you can also create separate groups within Blackboard, although I have found that students don't use these much. Instead, they prefer to go to the general discussion board. I also always set up a topic where students can post anonymous comments and suggestions for the class. I will occasionally "seed" this topic by putting out a question. For example: Encourage people to share (anonymously) how they are dividing up the work on their project, and how this division of labor is working. In one of my classes, students collect data and post it on Blackboard, where it is collected and shared anonymously with the rest of the class.

One way to deal with the accountability issue in group work is to include an individual assignment with the group assignment. Are there other effective ways to do this? Are peer evaluations helpful?
Group work should establish an explicit division of labor for any major task. This makes each person accountable for their individual piece of the task. Require each group to communicate their division of labor to you, and if they say "we will all work on everything equally," demand a more explicit plan. Even if they end up working together on each part, someone should have primary responsibility for each major chunk of the task. If the group is larger than two, someone in the group should also take primary responsibility for coordinating and integrating input, and for making sure everyone knows their deadlines and is meeting them. I do this myself when I work in project groups by having someone take on the official role of "taskmaster" or "nag." By making this an official role, it's less personal, easier to execute, and easier for the "nagged" person to accept.

I also require peer evaluations, and think they are important. However I think for groups that stay together across the term, a mid-term peer evaluation would be most helpful for the same reasons that TEP recommends mid-term teacher evaluations. I generally use permanent groups for in-class work, and each group has a folder that they pick up and return at the end of each class. They maintain an attendance sheet in this folder, including notes about "notified" absences—which means the group member let the others know he or she would be absent, and why. I encourage students to consult the attendance list before evaluating their peers for a participation grade.

Many students are in much bigger classes at the UO than they were in community college or high school, and feeling anonymous makes it easier to skip class. In my classes, they know for sure that several people will notice when they are missing—their fellow group-mates!

 

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