Formulating group ground rules

A six-part "Successful Teaching Practices" workshop is offered by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) this semester with last week's discussions centered around group work.  As the facilitator, there were a few key items that I was determined to include, one way or another, as a topic for conversation.  One such topic is the need for the students to have a conversation about what effective group work looks like - or, if you prefer, what the important ingredients might be.  There are different ways to go about this conversation.

A recommendation from McKeachie's Teaching Tips (2011) is to provide the student groups with a list of suggestions and to have them discuss each of the items together (see example list shared below).

Source: McKeachie (2011, p.199).

An alternative to providing the students with a pre-populated list is to have them brainstorm ideas for what should be included as part of a group activity.  In Helping Students Learn in a Learner-Centered Environment, Terry Doyle recommends a seven-step activity:

• The activity begins with students working together to respond to a pair of questions; the first question asks the students to identify to characteristics, behaviors, and attitudes that made positive contributions to successful group learning experiences in the past while the second question asks for characteristics, behaviors, and attitudes that acted as barriers (2008, p.86).  
• The second and third steps of the activity ask the students to record and then share the identified characteristics, behaviors, and attitudes with the whole class until all of them are on the table for discussion.  
• The groups are then asked to utilize this information to draft ground rules that will guide group work during the term.  
• Final steps of the activity include compiling the ground rules into a master list and having the class vote on each of the ground rules.  

Including students in the process is an important step and is very much consistent with the suggestions of shifting the balance of power towards the students found in Maryellen Weimer's Learner-Centered Teaching (2002).  In fact, Doyle identifies an activity from a workshop led by Weimer as the basis for the seven-step activity outlined in his book and summarized above.

References

Doyle, T. (2008). Helping students learn in a learner-centered environment: A guide to facilitating learning in higher education. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC.

McKeachie, W. J., & Svinicki, M. (2011). McKeachie's teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers (13th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Weimer, M. (2002). Learner-centered teaching: Five key changes to practice. 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.

Homogeneous vs. heterogeneous group formation

A few weeks ago, a colleague shared an interesting insight from her experiments with forming student groups: when students are grouped together by similar skill sets, some students who haven't previously demonstrated leadership skills eventually emerge as leaders for their respective teams.  She went on to explain that the non-leaders emerging as group leaders is a contrasting result to the occasions when groups were formed with an emphasis on mixing skill sets; in the case of these heterogeneous groups, the leadership role is most often assumed by a student who has previously demonstrated leadership skills.

Leadership can be important for a team that will be intact for longer-term assignments, including major projects.  This need for a leader can provide an opportunity for someone new to rise to the challenge when a team is composed of "social loafers," to borrow a phrase from a recent Faculty Focus article.  For a more heterogeneous team that includes social loafers and proven leaders, it is not overly surprising when social loafers continue to sit back while other group members take the lead.  Might this be an argument for forming homogeneous teams from time to time?

Of course, "homogeneous" can refer to a variety of characteristics.  Forming groups based on similar opinions can yield different results compared to groups based on similar skill sets.  One approach isn't necessarily better than the other; as stated in an earlier post, the best way to form groups largely depends on what the groups are being asked to accomplish.  Barkley, Cross, and Major (2005) point out that grouping students by skill level may be particularly beneficial in language and math courses, for example; the similarities are likely to foster communication among group members since they share a common starting point.

There are potential drawbacks to homogeneous groups, and these downsides are neatly packaged into arguments in favor of forming groups that are heterogeneous.  Groups that include students with a range of skills, for example, may be better prepared for a variety of tasks, and heterogeneous groups are likely to expose its members to a greater variety of backgrounds and/or experiences vs. homogeneous groups (Barkley, Cross, & Major, 2005, p. 45).  Sometimes heterogeneity can lead to disagreements among group members if they are approaching an issue or problem in different ways (which is not necessarily bad depending on the intended outcome!), and/or it may generate some unintended consequences if students are isolated from others with similar backgrounds (gender, academic ability, etc.) that may provide helpful support.  Note that if these potential downsides of heterogeneous groups seem to create too many hurdles, it may be worth (re)considering homogeneous groups based on the characteristic that is most important to clump together.

For instructors using groups for shorter-term, lower-stakes opportunities, switching back and forth between homogeneous and heterogeneous groups is always an option too!  For long-term groups focused on higher-stakes assignments, keeping groups intact for as long as possible is the general recommendation since it fosters trust between members.

Reference:

Barkley, E. F., Cross, K. P., & Major, C. H. (2005). Collaborative learning techniques: A handbook for college teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Self-selection or random assignment as options for short-term groups

My last post focused on a strategic way of forming student teams based on the Team-Based Learning Collaborative's guidelines, an approach that aims to construct teams that work well for longer-term, high-stakes tasks and assignments.  What about the more spontaneous, less-planning-involved options?  There are times when an instructor wants to use a quick group activity to break up a lecture, for example, and taking the time to identify and prioritize criteria for sorting students just isn't feasible or even needed.

Students self-selecting groups or the instructor randomly assigning students to groups are suitable approaches when the groups will only be intact for a short period of time and/or for low-stakes tasks.  Having a go-to method for randomly assigning students is often useful, and there are a number of options that can be executed quickly, e.g., having students count off by the number of desired teams.  For a creative twist on randomly assigning students to teams, check out this Geography-based approach used by Dr. Sarah Bednarz at Texas A&M:

"For short term groups (one or two classes), I frequently use random assignment, e.g., as students enter class they are given a card with an identifier such as the continents, islands, capital cities (geography examples in my case). Then, when it is time to form the groups, I can simply ask all the Antarcticas to move to the back of the room; all the South Americas to the front, etc."

This example of group formation is one of several offered by the Faculty Teaching and Learning Portal at Texas A&M University; see more examples and an expanded discussion of team formation here.  A Faculty Focus newsletter from last summer, "Better Group Work Experiences Begin with How the Groups Are Formed," highlights a few more quick ways to randomly assign students to groups (e.g., birthdays, last digit of cell phone number) as part of a comparison of random assignment, student-formed, and instructor-formed groups.

What about the students selecting their own groups?  The research on this approach seems to be mixed, at best.  For example, both van der Laan Smith and Spindle (2007) and Hilton and Phillips (2010) document the benefits to students when students are allowed to self-select groups (higher grades for high-achieving students and higher quality work reported by students, respectively) for accounting courses; however, the aforementioned Faculty Focus newsletter points out that trade-offs do exist.  Students working within self-selected groups must grapple with the challenge of transitioning from social interactions to completing tasks and are not necessarily expanding their experiences of working with individuals they do not know.  The observation from Hilton and Phillips (2010) that students are more likely to get to work immediately when working together with others that they already know may be advantage enough to overlook these potential downsides when dealing with short-term, low-stakes group situations.

References:

Hilton, S., & Phillips, F. (2010). Instructor-assigned and student-selected groups: A view from inside. Issues In Accounting Education, 25(1), 15-33.

van der Laan Smith, J., & Spindle, R. (2007). The impact of group formation in a cooperative learning environment. Journal of Accounting Education, 25(4), 153-167.

A process for sorting students into diverse teams

I have recently agreed to teach a class during the Fall 2014 semester, so I am listening more closely than ever to conversations related to forming students into teams as I anticipate teaching in one of the active learning classrooms.  Don't get me wrong, I've used group work in classes many times before, but there is something about the active learning room being focused on students working in groups that has me thinking more carefully about group formation.  What is the best way to organize students into teams?  In the past, I've tried a variety of approaches, including organizing students by major/program and gender (with the hopes of a somewhat even distribution), allowing students to choose their own, and enlisting our course management system to randomly assign students to groups.  Other instructors on campus have students join teams based on availability for meetings, skills/strengths that align with group roles, grades in prerequisite courses - the list goes on and on.  As with most other things, the best option for organizing students into teams seems to largely depend on the objective.  

Given that there are options aplenty, one group formation approach at a time will be highlighted here in order to allow room for some discussion of the when and why aspects.  Today's focus is on the approach recommended by the Team-Based Learning Collaborative, which aims to provide all teams with equal chances at success.  The general advice from the Collaborative (see response to forming teams FAQ here) points to three recommendations:

1. distribute assets and liabilities ("background factors that are likely to make a difference in students' performance in this class") as evenly as possible across groups, 
2. be sure that teams do not include pre-existing subgroups that may hinder the team's ability to work together as a whole (e.g., three roommates paired with two other students who do not know each other), and 
3. teams are formed using a process that is transparent to the students.

Luckily, the Collaborative's website also offers Michael Sweet's example of how to quickly form student teams according to these guidelines (see "Forming Fair Groups Quickly" halfway down the page).  In this example, the formation of the teams actually takes place in the classroom; however, the instructor has a couple of key decisions to make ahead of time.  The "sorting criteria" - that is, the characteristics that should be evenly distributed across the student teams - must be determined and prioritized in advance.  What strengths ("assets") should be distributed across teams?  What challenges ("liabilities") are best to spread out?  If students who have completed an advanced statistics course, for example, are likely to be at an advantage in the course, then identifying this as a sorting criterion and ensuring those students are evenly dispersed is important.  Likewise, if students without experience collecting data are going to be at somewhat of a disadvantage, then that experience/lack of experience should be evenly distributed as well.  Once these criteria have been identified and prioritized, then the sorting of the students and counting off into teams can commence.  This approach is likely to work best for instructors that are interested in forming (strategically) diverse teams that have an element of randomness to them so that each team has a pretty even chance at succeeding on the project or in the course.