Teachers love it. Students loathe it.
At least, that is my experience. Actually, I don't know if ALL students loathe it. I haven't done a survey or anything. I've just never heard anyone say "Let's do some group work!" (take my poll on the right!)
A quick search on Youtube comes up with a long list of rants against group work. Check out this one (nasty language alert, but typical of most of the complaints).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DGxC06AjjA
So, right now I am wading through the "swamp of tangly, dirty, every student for themselves, take no prisoners, just get it done" group work. It inspires dread...justly so, in my opinion.
Teachers always say "but you have to learn to collaborate and negotiate in real life".
Students always say "but I'd rather poke out my eyes with these paperclips".
Please understand, I don't mean this as an attack on my fellow group members. They are fine people, and have their own commitments and their own realities, just like me. I don't have anything against them. We are all doing our best. I believe we will come up with something in the end. It might, if we are lucky, resemble something like what we are supposed to be doing....but on the other hand....
Do the benefits really outweigh the pain and discomfort? Do the means really justify the end? I'd better see some damn impressive results in the next week if I'm gonna swallow it.
As a teacher, I am now seriously considering banning group work from my repertoire forever. I'm hating every second of it. Again, nothing to do with my groupees...I just think I don't have the personality for this. I'm just really anti-social, I guess. I think that's where group work falls down. It doesn't take into account that some people don't work well in groups. Some people are not joiners. Some people work best while cocooned in their own little universe, perhaps like snails (I know snails don't live in cocoons, but you know what I mean). And is that such a bad thing? Some people say that "there is a role for everyone" in group work, and that a natural organization will occur....leaders will emerge, workers will find their groove, accountants will do the accounting, designers will do the designing. But what if you get a group where all of the members just want to be left alone?
It can happen.
I'm just glad it's not for marks. We'll just chalk it up to experience and pray it never happens again!
Hi Rona,
ReplyDeleteA refreshing post! In an age when the benefits of group work are more or less taken for granted, it's good to challenge them like you did and ask yourself: do we/our students really need it?
I am in two minds on the issue. On the one hand, when it comes to my MA coursework I know that I can achieve better outcome in shorter terms if I work alone rather than in a group, especially if it's a virtual group, whether it be synchronous or asynchronous. That's because the coordination of group members' input takes a lot of effort and any mis-coordination negatively affects the outcome.
On the other hand, as a teacher I think the inhibitions start when the outcome of the group work is to be assessed, and thus each member starts to bear equal responsibility for the final product. Which is not perceived as fair, understandably. So if there is to be summative assessment, there's a problem.
However, my students (in the private English Centre where I teach adults and there's no formal assessment) adore groupwork. I give them creative assignments to work on as a group and later I give them verbal feedback, which tends to be positive, emphasising the strengths of each group member. You can't teach a language without putting students into situations where they have to interact, can you? Individually, one can do grammar exercises or written tasks but when it comes to increasing the amounts of speaking practice in class, I can't think of anything better than group or pair work.
Alex