One of my favorite teaching blogs, In Socrates’ Wake, has Philosophy prof Adam Potthast asking this question of his colleagues:
(1) What is the place of group work in the philosophy classroom? (2) In encouraging modern pedagogical values of teamwork and collaboration are we holding back or harming our brightest students to some degree? (3) If group work works well in your courses, what kinds of activities do you use (other than ice-breakers at the beginning of the course)? And finally (4) if there are undergraduate or graduate students reading this blog, what are your thoughts?
Potthast was inspired to do this by his students’ (very negative) reactions to the groupwork they had been assigned in other courses, a reaction that seemed persistent enough for him to wonder what situations it worked best in, and whether it was being overused.
There are some really good exchanges here, from undergrads and grad students as well as faculty, but my favorite was Seth Marbin’s citation of “social loafing,” which came from a Wikimedia open-content book, Managing Groups and Teams.
Though I was looking for answers about getting the best work from my groups in my Swift and Literary Studies course, I was immediately reminded of all the most toxic aspects of committee work. Here are some of the explanations offered in the article for individuals underperforming when put together into groups:
Equitable contribution: Team members believe that others are not putting forth as much effort as themselves. Since they feel that the others in the group are slacking, they lessen their efforts too. This causes a downward cycle that ends at the point where only the minimum amount of work is performed.
Submaximal goal setting: Team members may perceive that with a well-defined goal and with several people working towards it, they can work less for it. The task then becomes optimizing rather than maximizing.
Lessened contingency between input and outcome: Team members may feel they can hide in the crowd and avoid the consequences of not contributing. Or, a team member may feel lost in the crowd and unable to gain recognition for their contributions (Latane, 1998). This description is characteristic of people driven by their uniqueness and individuality. In a group, they lose this individuality and the recognition that comes with their contributions. Therefore, these group members lose motivation to offer their full ability since it will not be acknowledged (Charbonnier et al., 1998). Additionally, large group sizes can cause individuals to feel lost in the crowd. With so many individuals contributing, some may feel that their efforts are not needed or will not be recognized (Kerr, 1989).
Lack of evaluation: Loafing begins or is strengthened in the absence of an individual evaluation structure imposed by the environment (Price & Harrison, 2006). This occurs because working in the group environment results in less self-awareness (Mullen, 1983). For example, a member of a sales team will loaf when sales of the group are measured rather than individual sales efforts.
Unequal distribution of compensation: In the workplace, compensation comes in monetary forms and promotions and in academics it is in the form of grades or positive feedback. If an individual believes compensation has not been allotted equally amongst group members, he will withdraw his individual efforts (Piezon & Donaldson, 2005).
Non-cohesive group: A group functions effectively when members have bonded and created high-quality relationships. If the group is not cohesive, members are more prone to social loafing since they are not concerned about letting down their teammates (Piezon & Donaldson, 2005).
When we think about dysfunctional academic units, whether departments or committees, it’s usually because dynamics like this have built up historically and become self-reinforcing within the unit. For that matter, when I recall my least functional student groups, it’s usually because one or more members are so socially clueless that they alienate the others and make it difficult for everyone else to complete their tasks. It’s that kind of stress, the stress of having a colleague who cannot be trusted to accomplish what he or she has been assigned to do, that makes groupwork unpleasant for students and faculty alike. Of course, in the academy, we call our groupwork “service.”
So what to do?
In relation to university and departmental service, I’d second the Tenured Radical’s suggestion not to act like an utter and complete asshole. If you’re unlucky enough to be chairing a committee, or several committees, like I’m doing this semester, try to learn how to avoid wasting other people’s time, which would be my definition of bad leadership. I’m still struggling with that one myself.
When it comes to teaching people in groups more effectively, the most important lesson I took away from the Wikimedia articles was about the active role it demanded from the instructor: the instructor needs to establish ground rules, and to make the schedule, tasks, and assignments as clear as possible; to monitor group interactions for any bullying or loafing behavior; to keep up regular evaluations of both individual and group efforts and productions in a timely way; and to be ready to highlight positive contributions or to intervene in negative situations whenever appropriate.
Looking at this daunting list of tasks for instructors, I suspect that the negative reactions to groupwork in undergraduate classes come from students who are looking for instructors, rightly or wrongly, to intervene in situations that they themselves feel powerless to fix. If they cannot get the instructor’s attention, or cannot get the situation resolved to their satisfaction, then students may very well feel that their instructor has abandoned them. Only establishment of clear ground rules at the start, and then continual communication throughout the semester, will prevent those kinds of reactions.
DM
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7 responses so far ↓
KW // September 30, 2007 at 12:19 am
*Do* students hate groupwork? According to the pedagogy gurus that my institution frequently brings in to advise faculty, the kids these days learn more effectively from each other and prefer, if at all possible, to do so. Based on the say-so of such gurus, I’ve experimented in my classes with the kind of group activities that I would have LOATHED myself as an undergraduate–and to my surprise found that they work better than I anticipate in getting the students engaged with the material. But you’re absolutely right: they require a great deal of planning, structure, and vigilance. My first time with any new group-work assignment, I invariably overestimate how self-directed the groups will be; the second time around I build in a lot more deadlines and make my expectations more explicit.
One thing I’ve found makes the students more willing participants is a feedback mechanism by which they can tell me if other group members are pulling their weight–and I explicitly tell them that such information is a main point of the feedback mechanism. Even though they don’t end up using it a lot (what can I say? I have wonderful students!) the fact that it’s there seems to make them more willing to invest themselves in the assignment.
diogenes1000 // September 30, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Well, I generally get pretty good evaluations, but the one thing some students fix upon is the groupwork; some really do hate it, though I see so many benefits to it that I don’t intend to retreat from it. There’s no reason to overreact to comments like this, but for me this is a sign that I could be doing my end better.
One mechanism I have is a personal statement that each student makes at the end of the semester listing her own contributions to the group. Though some students will overstate their roles, it’s usually pretty clear who’s doing the work and who isn’t.
But I’ve had a few students lately who seem either unable or unwilling to perform at even a minimal level. It’s true that I’ve set up the course so that someone who’s genuinely working at a D-F range will screw up everyone else’s business. Once again, though, I’m unwilling to retreat from the groups, because that kind of stuff can usually get pulled up to more acceptable work, if they can stick it out. It’s just that I need to make sure that others are not getting penalized, or being forced to do more work because of their classmates’ cluelessness.
DM
dave mazella // September 30, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Ooops, I keep forgetting to sign out before I comment, so don’t be confused by my username. Diogenes1000 is Dave Mazella.
dave mazella // September 30, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Carrie,
If your teaching posts are any indication of what goes on in your classroom (and I think they are), then you are a careful and conscientious instructor. They’re lucky to have you, and I can say that because I’ve learned from you as well. Good luck tomorrow.
DM
Carrie Shanafelt // September 30, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Every semester, I dread the first group work day in each class, since (especially at Queens, where there’s no dorm culture and cooperation is a struggle) there’s always a teasing accusation that I’m “getting away with something” by assigning it. Somewhere, students have gotten the impression that group work is what teachers do when they don’t want to teach and don’t care about outcomes. I don’t mind a little ribbing from my students, but it’s also really important for that first group work day to do some metacognitive exercise at the end that shows them how much they achieved together.
The truth is, I hate group work. It makes me anxious, as a student and an instructor. I hate spending an hour floating like a cloud around the room, listening in and keeping everyone on track. It’s a thousand times easier for me to lecture for 75 minutes than it is for me to develop purposeful group work assignments. But I do group work because it works.
In my poetics class this semester, it was finally a group work day that got them to figure out what it means to do analysis. Every group came up with a specific analytical thesis about the function of rhyme with respect to meaning in Poe, and then they presented them to the class. There’s such an attitude of defeatism in a lot of undergrad English students about the possibility of saying something interesting and valuable, and giving them the chance to watch their classmates all doing college-level thinking about poetry was a big moment for them.
Tomorrow, I’m being observed in my British Lit survey, and it’s our only group work day of the semester. It feels like a gamble, in a way, because there’s a part of me that will never trust group work, despite the fact that I’ve never seen it fail to produce more interesting dialogue than everyone-face-front class discussion.
I was a such a terrible undergrad. The more I teach, the more obvious this becomes to me. Bad attitude.
m // March 10, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I’m a student and I truly hate group work on projects. However, group projects done with people I know fairly well are good learning experiences. Group work is beneficial to students when everyone feels comfortable with all group members. I think instructors should offer the choice of individual or group work for all projects so that students can decide what works better for them at the time.
dave mazella // March 10, 2008 at 5:26 pm
m, thanks for your student’s perspective on this.
These are good points–students generally DO perform better in situations they can create and control.
The problem is that in any particular class I teach, especially in a commuter school like mine, some percentage of the class will be familiar enough with one another to pick partners knowingly, while another segment will be coming in for the first time, and will be better off grouped impersonally by the prof.
In a large, “churning” pool of English majors, either system of grouping, voluntary or involuntary, student- or prof-selected, penalizes some group of students.
On the other hand, group work undoubtedly works better for the full range of students, and is more time-effective for faculty, than relying on individuals to sink or swim by themselves.
That’s why faculty started developing these techniques, so they wouldn’t have to spend the whole of their classtime exclusively addressing the 3-4 students who are on their way to getting As anyway.
So I suspect that group work is here to stay, though it will always be in tension with the individualism fostered by our grading system. Perhaps that individualism, which our grading system helps to reinforce, is part of the reason why students resent and resist the group-learning in the first place. Any thoughts?
Best,
DM
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