Organised group work and study groups
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- Collaborative learning.
- Study groups.
- Advantages.
- Disadvantages.
- Hints, tips and suggestions.
- Further information.
1. Collaborative learning
In the UK higher education system great emphasis is placed on collaborative learning and peer support. Students will be expected to work in teams or organised groups for periods of their studies in the majority of undergraduate programmes. These ‘group projects' or ‘group activities' usually occur within a class and across one year group although you may also find examples of mixed level groupings, where more experienced, higher level students are asked to work with more junior, lower level students. For example, Proctoring may involve final year students supervising first year students engaged in practical group work, or in discussing the concepts and content arising from a lecture. The final year students may gain academic credit for their supervisory skills whilst the first year students will be assessed on their achievement of practical goals and skills.
2. Study groups
Study groups are frequently informal gatherings of students choosing to study together. They seem to be more commonly formed between students studying advanced topics and at Master's level but not exclusively so. The advantages can be significant for students who discuss their learning outside formal classes. The one potential difficulty is the fine line between working collaboratively and collusion; the latter is regarded as a form of plagiarism. So care needs to be taken to properly brief students on where that boundary lies and how they can ensure that their useful co-study doesn't put them at risk of an accusation of cheating. Your institution will provide guidance on the nature and penalties for plagiarism but for a general overview please see The Learning Center's plagiarism site.
3. Advantages
A big driver for the inclusion of group work in courses has been the government's skills agenda that places great emphasis on the development of skills that graduates will need when they enter employment. Employability skills include a wide range of professional and ‘soft skills' including the ability to work with others, leadership, negotiation etc.
There are also academic reasons why group work is beneficial - peer learning has been demonstrated to be very effective. Learning from someone who has recently learnt themselves and vice versa helping somebody understand something that you have recently learned can deepen understanding.
From a teacher's perspective there may also be practical, time and resource constraints that make group work necessary. For example, in many laboratory and practical classes equipment and facilities may be limited and thus make group work not only desirable but also necessary. From a workload perspective marking group reports rather than individual write-ups may also provide a saving (however, see Disadvantages below).
4. Disadvantages
The most significant disadvantage about conducting group projects is the difficulties associated with summatively assessing such work. There is tension arising from the fact that students are awarded individual degrees yet making some of their marks dependent on the abilities and work ethic of their fellow students. This can cause problems for students and tutors/assessors. In essence there are two general strategies for dealing with this situation.
- Tell the students it is a ‘real world' situation that they will face, and learning how to work with others and manage any shortfalls in the team's effort are key skills they will need to master. This approach of basically leaving it to the students to sort out does need to be backed up by providing student training and guidance on how to work in teams.
- To design assessment criteria and methods which allow the tutor to reward individual students for their individual contribution to the team project. There are many ways of doing this - none of which are problem-free and by rewarding individuals the team effort may be compromised.
In deciding which general approach is most useful for you and your students it is important to consider the specific learning outcomes and goals of the module and to consider the context you are teaching in. A key aspect of which is the ‘value' of the group work activity - e.g. if it is ‘high stakes' then your students will be very keen to see a fair and transparent assessment system in place which rewards their individual skills and abilities.
5. Hints, tips and suggestions
Consider how you will put students into groups in the first place. Depending on the learning goals different strategies can be used:
- Random - usually friendship groups result.
- Allocated - alphabetical order is one way to do this.
- Managed - mixed on the basis of ability, gender, ethnicity etc.
- Streaming - group ‘like' students together often on the basis of ability/previous marks.
- Designed - students put together to compliment each other's knowledge, skills and learning styles.
- Hybrid - allow students to pair up (random) and then you decide the mixing of pairs (managed/designed).
Make it very clear how much ‘supervisory' support your student groups will have access to from the outset and try to ensure some degree of parity between groups (particularly if the group work has ‘high stakes' assessment).
Encouraging your student groups to self-manage can be very beneficial for all concerned; for example, requiring groups to rotate the ‘chair' for their meetings and to keep formal minutes etc. Not only does this help the groups to organise themselves efficiently but can also provide a source of ‘monitoring' information for the tutor. Some tutors ask that student groups submit their regular meeting minutes to them or ‘post' them up on a virtual learning environment (VLE) site such as Blackboard or WebCT.
Encouraging students to self-assess or reflect on their contributions to the team, their own skills and ways of working with others can be very helpful. This will help your students to be able to transfer what they learn in one ‘group working' situation forward to the next occasion when they are asked to work in this way. Indeed this may well form part of their Personal Development Planning and be explicitly recorded in their PDP file or log.
6. Further information
Exley, K. and Dennick, R., 2004. Small group teaching: Tutorials, Seminars and Beyond. Key Guides for Effective Teaching in Higher Education. RoutledgeFalmer: London.
Falchikov, N., 2002. Learning Together: Peer Tutoring in Higher Education. Routledge: London.
Jaques, D., 2000. Learning in Groups: A Handbook for improving group work. 3rd edition, Routledge: London.
Thorley, L and Gregory, R. (Eds.), 1994. Using Group-based learning in Higher Education, Kogan Page: London.
Using group and team work: Web resources and bibliography, HE Academy, compiled by Peter Morgan 2002
Barbara Gross Davis, Collaborative Learning: Group work and Study Teams. Tools for Teaching, University of California, Berkeley.
Training students to work in teams: why & how? Jane Prichard, Robert Stratford and Charlie Hardy of the University of Southampton (PDF download).