Group Work: An Overview Otto Borchert

Overview 3 forms of group work Competition, Individualistic, Cooperation 4 principles needed for effective group work PIES Grouping Students 4 different ways

Cooperative Exercise Pairs Check What are the advantages of cooperation?

Cooperation Advantages Disadvantages Well researched and include: increased understanding, increased student participation, develops social skills, mainstreams students quicker, reduces ethnic tension, and improves self esteem Disadvantages Different managing style Incorrectly formulated exercises can be harmful

Competition Advantages Disadvantages Big motivation Cultural Bias (Some cultures do not emphasize competition, these cultures tend to do worse under competitive stress) Serious drop in motivation if there is no sense that it is possible to catch up If incorrectly created, students are not compelled to help each other

Individualistic Individual working by themselves Advantages: Easier to manage (Give students a worksheet that everyone must complete separately but do not grade) Disadvantages: Students are not allowed to help each other

Coopetition Combination of Cooperation and Competition Students break into teams, teams compete against each other Balance between cooperation and competition (decreases the disadvantages of pure competition while adding cooperative advantages)

Good Group Exercises Kagan’s PIES principles Positive Interdependence Individual Accountability Equal Participation Simultaneous Interaction Johnson adds Interpersonal and Small Group Skills, and Group Processing to this list

Positive Interdependence Each individual's contributions to a group is needed in order for that group to be successful Example: In the digger, sifter, dater combination. If there are no diggers, the group will not be successful, same if there are no sifters or daters.

Individual Accountability Each individual needs to feel that they have contributed to the project There needs to be a sense that everyone else has worked as well The teacher needs to be able to recognize that everyone has played a part in the exercise

Equal Participation Not only do people need to feel that they and others have worked, the participation level needs to seems equal. No stragglers or people who end up doing all the work In our example, the diggers, sifters, and daters need to work about the same amount of time.

Simultaneous Interaction The group must be working with each other at the same time. In our example, if the daters were all offsite from the diggers and sifter, the two groups would not be able to interact as fully to learn about the others roles.

Interpersonal and Social Skills Some students need to be taught good behaviors Ex: Don’t make fun of group members, all ideas are important and useful, etc. Why? Some people are naturally social people, just like some are naturally good at computers. People who aren’t good at computers need to be taught the skills, just like a person who isn’t good at socializing needs to be taught.

Grouping Students There are a variety of ways to group students Homogenous language groups – Students with the same language level are grouped with each other Heterogeneous groups – Students are purposely arranged with different levels of ability and different genders and races Random groups Interest groups – Students select partners based on individual interests.