Clear objectives are a must for group work

Earlier this week, I stumbled across the tools and tips offered by The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at Penn State University while looking for insights on structuring effective group work.  At the time, I was on the hunt for info about roles for group members but took note of the other group-related advice, especially this document that addresses a series of commonly asked "How do I...?" questions.  The first question on the list is a particularly important one:

How do I decide which assignments/activities to make collaborative?

The authors point out that some assignments and activities are better suited for effective group work experiences than others.  Insights from IDEA Item #5 also reiterate this point with an argument that students will simply divide up, not discuss, the work when asked to address knowledge-type questions.  Instead, "the issue or problem should challenge the groups and demonstrate that there are no easy answers within the area of study."  Some follow up questions from The Schreyer Institute include:

What is the objective or goal of this assignment or activity? 

and...

How will that objective be furthered by asking students to work in groups? 

Perhaps the students will benefit from discussing possible ideas with one another, working together to arrive at a solution to a problem, or reflecting on information that was just presented - the exact purpose of the group approach will depend on the details of your lesson.  The reason(s) for working in a group must be clear to the students as this helps to establish a structure for positive interdependence within the group.  The purpose of the assignment or activity must be such that the team members need one another to achieve it!   The remaining follow up questions get at this important point:

Is this project complex and challenging enough that it would be impossible for an individual student to complete it alone?  

Will this project require students to synthesize their work in true collaboration, rather than just complete work separately and turn it in together at the end?

In addition to designing the assignment, activity, or project for collaboration and synthesis, this must also be clearly communicated to the students.  Nilson (2010) points out that unclear, imprecise group assignments create confusion for students about expectations and the intended purpose; as a result, this lack of clarity is a major reason that group work experiences fizzle.  Note that making an assignment longer, for example, is not necessarily a recommended way to transform it into one for a group.  Instead, working in groups is an opportunity for deeper (higher-level) thinking.  Maybe instead of recalling information, you want students to work together to apply or analyze information - a group may be better equipped than an individual to tackle a topic at this level.  If you are a fan of Bloom's Taxonomy, then you may find this wheel version with action verbs and student products helpful when designing and communicating clear assignment objectives (wheel created by Emily Hixton at Purdue University).

Reference:

Nilson, L.B. (2010). Teaching At Its Best. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Roles and structuring positive interdependence in groups

Positive interdependence is identified by Smith (1996) as a key element for successful group work.  What does positive interdependence look like?  There are a few things to be on the lookout for, but they all center on group members working together.  That is, students must working together to complete the task(s) and succeed as a team; if the tasks can be split up and completed individually, then this brings the very existence of the group/team into question.  Each member of the group must view the input of the other members as an ingredient for success in order for the group experience to be a collaborative one.

Forms of positive interdependence
A list of possible ways to structure positive interdependence is also provided by Smith (1996):

• group product-goal interdependence (e.g., one answer must be agreed upon by the group);
• learning goal interdependence (e.g., each member must be able to explain the group's answer);
• role interdependence (each member must fulfill responsibilities of an assigned role);
• reward interdependence (shared reward);
• resource interdependence (shared resources); 
• task interdependence (division of labor).

(See this page from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research for expanded descriptions of each form of positive interdependence listed above.)  A number of these are self-explanatory, but the others warrant additional discussion.  Here I will focus on role interdependence with the intention of returning to others in later posts.

Roles for group members

If you are looking around for a list of possible roles, you'll quickly notice that the exact contents of the list will depend on the source; however, lists' suggestions and examples tend to overlap.  I am, for example, currently looking at this list of roles for projects from a Penn State resource archive, this list of possible roles from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research site, and ideas for student roles from the Starting Point project (just three resources of the many out there), and "facilitator" and "recorder" are both common suggestions from all three sources while "skeptic" is offered on the Penn State site as a role for group projects with a notable amount of brainstorming involved.  This last detail points to the fact that roles should align with what is being asked of the groups.  Are the groups completing a semester-long project, or are they participating in a group discussion that is recurring each week?  For the latter, Starting Point suggests "elaborator" - someone who establishes connections between the current discussion and previous topics or overall theme - as a possible role, but this may not be something that is needed (or at least a priority) for a semester-long project.

What about rotating roles?  Again, this is likely to depend on what the groups are focused on achieving.  For shorter/less in-depth group assignments that are recurring throughout the term, having the group members rotate through the roles provides each individual with a chance try different roles - ones that are comfortable and others that are not-so-comfortable.  Of course, for an ongoing project, switching roles may interrupt the group's progress and might not be desirable.

Should the students or the instructor decide the roles?  The recommendation from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research is to allow students with group work experience the opportunity to select/decide roles (when time allows) but that it may be best for the instructor to assign roles if students are new to or not as comfortable with working in groups.  So far, this is the one recommendation I have come across for who decides the roles; I will be sure to update with others if and when they are located.

The group-focused series will continue later this week with more on key ingredients for building effective groups and/or group work experiences.  Identifying clear objectives - the importance of and the instructor's role - is a likely candidate for the next post.

Reference:

Smith, K. A. (1996). Cooperative learning: Making “groupwork” work. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 1996(67), 71–82.