Document Index - download an all text version of this page.

	Why Use Groups
	Problems Associated With Groups
	Factors That Promote These Misperceptions
	Crafting Groups That Work
	Assessing Group Work.

Other Links

	Back to Dr. Mencer's BCCE Page.
	Back to Dr. Mencer's Homepage.
	Back to the 15th BCCE Program.

Why Use Groups

Successful group work helps students learn to be autonomous, self-regulated, and motivated.

Well-planned and implemented group activities help students discover applications for knowledge rather than just isolated chunks of information.

Strategically planned group activities can cover more material, in more depth, than individual projects.

More and more employers want evidence of applicants' ability to work in teams.

Groups generate better solutions than individuals.

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Problems Associated With Groups

Motivation - Student Perceptions: "It's a waste of time", "I learn better by myself" , "It's the blind leading the blind."

Intellectual property: Good students do all the work for freeloaders who don't care. Further, collaborative work is hard to assess for individual grades later on.

Content Coverage: Since group work allows students time to make their own discoveries, the amount of ground covered seems less.

Teacher role: If we're not acting as "the sage on the stage," we somehow feel we're not performing our task of dispensing information.

Grading: How do we assess collaborative work for individual grades?

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Factors That Promote These Misperceptions

Groups are hard work because they require knowledge to be applied to a real situation, rather than merely consumed.

Groups make the messiness of learning visible because they display the process of thinking (or getting confused) in public and verbal ways.

Groups require both students and teachers to change the way we envision our role(s) in the classroom.

Group work is not inherently beneficial, it has to be planned and implemented strategically to work well.

Groups don't automatically succeed. their social interactions have to be carefully facilitated, but not micro-managed.

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Crafting Groups That Work

Have a clear rationale for assigning a group project.

Construct the task so that it demonstrates that a group can reach a better decision than individuals can.

Think developmentally in crafting group exercises. How does this exercise flow out of previous class discussions, activities, and assignments, and how will it set up future class discussions, activities, and assignments?

Give the students the information they need to perform effectively. What roles will group members play? What should they do if they have problems? How will they know when they have successfully completed the task?

Communicate the legitimate learning goals behind each project.

Help students to develop a set of guidelines for how they will work together and mutual expectations of appropriate performance.

Provide adequate feedback throughout the process. Ask students to comment on the advantages and disadvantages of the various solutions different groups develop.

Provide closure, making group aims explicit, showing which solutions are most productive, and reminding students of what, why, and how they were accomplishing goals.

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Assessing Group Work

Pros of group grades: Shared work should get a shared grade. Since the result is a single product, the instructor should evaluate the project as a unit. Giving a group grade provides the motivation for students to perform the task.

Cons of group grades: Work is not equally performed, it's hard to know fairly did what, a grade is assumed to measure individual learning.

Possible solutions:

Evaluation by the students, themselves. Provide a check list that gives written documentation on topics like attendance, input toward the project, participation, and accomplishments.

Design the task so that individual members make personal contributions.

Think of concrete, measurable ways to assess abstractions. How will you know "thoroughness," for example, when you see it?

Set up a grading scheme in which different tasks are given different weights.

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Other Links

	Back to Dr. Mencer's BCCE Page.
	Back to Dr. Mencer's Homepage.
	Back to the 15th BCCE Program.