Posts Tagged ‘group work strategies’
June 19 - Defining and Promoting Teamwork in the Classroom
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
Group work and teamwork. In college courses the terms refer to students working together, often on an assignment or an activity. Group work is the more neutral term, whereas teamwork implies something about how the students are working together. And although teamwork is easy to identify when we see it on a playing field or court, what does teamwork look like in a college classroom?
March 20 - Five Things Students Can Learn through Group Work
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
I often get questions about group work. Recently, the question was phrased like this: “Can students learn anything in groups?” And, like faculty sometimes do, this questioner proceeded with the answer. “I don’t think my students can. When they work in groups they have no interest in doing quality work. Whatever the first person says, they all agree with that and relax into a social conversation.”
October 10 - Peer Assessment is Not an Elixir for All Group Work Challenges
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
Here’s an empirical result I would not have predicted. It emerged in a meta-analysis of research on group learning activities as reported in 32 studies published in Teaching of Psychology between 1974 and 2011. I’ll be doing a detailed highlight of the entire article in an upcoming issue of The Teaching Professor. But the finding that surprised me involved the use of peer assessment within groups: “Our hypothesis of better learning outcomes with peer assessment was not supported. In fact, the data suggest that the opposite pattern may exist.” (p. 164)
September 18 - Using Group Work to Promote Deep Learning
By: Mary Bart in Online Seminars
Designed appropriately, cooperative learning assignments can actually turn group work—what was once a frustrating exercise for instructors and students alike—into a powerful way to reinforce course concepts and promote understanding. Let Barbara Millis, director of the Teaching and Learning Center at the University of Texas at San Antonio, show you how.
July 10 - Noncontributing Members in Small Groups: An Important Distinction
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching and Learning
One of the biggest concerns that faculty have about using small groups involves the contributions of individual members and whether some in the group are riding on the contributions of others. These freeloaders, who are mostly known in the literature as “social loafers,” are assumed not to be contributing because they are lazy and happy to have others doing the work. Students share this concern about nonproductive group members. They regularly list it as one of the main reasons they don’t like to participate in group work.
May 11 - An Interesting Group Work Model
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Effective Teaching Strategies
It has a long, not-easy-to-remember name: Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning. It usually goes by its acronym: POGIL. It’s a model designed to replace lectures (though not necessarily all of them). Students discuss course material in teams, and they use carefully designed material that involves sequenced sets of questions—that’s the guided-inquiry part of the model. The process part relates to what is generally a three-phase learning cycle that involves exploration, invention, and application. It is derived from Piaget’s work on mental functioning.
February 22 - My Students Don’t Like Group Work
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
Students don’t always like working in groups. Ann Taylor, an associate professor of chemistry at Wabash College, had a class that was particularly vocal in their opposition. She asked for their top 10 reasons why students don’t want to work in groups and they offered this list (which I’ve edited slightly).
February 8 - Group Work: A Bill of Rights and Responsibilities for All Members
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
I recently revisited something I have always considered a great resource. It originally appeared in a 1992 issue of The Teaching Professor and was published then as a Study Group Member’s Bill of Rights. It outlined what individuals had the right to expect when they participated in study groups. Students not only have rights, they also have responsibilities. Those rights and responsibilities are relevant in any group activity used to accomplish educational goals. The version below attempts to capture those larger expectations and duties.
June 10 - Group Work: Are Student-Selected Groups More Effective?
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching and Learning
If the course involves a graded group project, should instructors let students form their own groups or should the instructor create the groups? This decision is not always easy or obvious. Some students lobby hard to form their own groups, arguing that knowing each other ensures that they will be able to work together productively. On the other hand, in the world of work, most of the time employees do not get to pick their collaborators. There’s a task, and those with knowledge and relevant skills are formed into a group and assigned to complete the project, solve the problem, or develop the product.
February 23 - Group Exams and Quizzes: The Benefits of Student Collaboration
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
Have you ever used any sort of group testing activity? The approach is not without benefits. Most students find exams enormously stressful and abundant research documents that high levels of test anxiety can compromise performance. Said more bluntly, students can know the information, but be so anxious they can’t summon it for the exam. Letting students work together on test questions reduces that anxiety considerably. It could be a case of “misery loves company” or the “two heads are better than one” scenario.
