Group work is not a “refreching change from just a lecture”, but a powerful form of work when people learn something new. Here are some good reasons to choose group work. And a risk to keep an eye on.
Organizing learning in group form can provide several different benefits:
More senses
Sure, a little variety contributes to that! Students get shared experiences (not least spatial and social) that contribute to learning. Group experiences are often strong experiences, as the student has been more active than in the traditional lecture situation. The intellectual experience of having gained a certain insight is enhanced by the stronger social situation in which it took place.
In addition, the group experiences create a common frame of reference to refer to during the continued work in the course.
Active processing of the learning content
Students are forced to actively process the topic when communicating with others about it. They have to formulate their own thoughts and they are exposed to others’ different ways of approaching the subject.
Provide a clear structure for the study work
Group work mean group pressure and learning can benefit from that. According to modern motivational research (SDT, see reference below), the basic psychological need for relatedness contributes to us spontaneously seeking closeness to and confirmation from other individuals and spontaneously internalizing the group’s norms, for example about what are important attitudes and behaviors. This is especially true of the interaction in smaller groups. The response we recieve from other group members in a small group help us to “become individuals”, to form our identity.
With a good group assignment as the starting point, the most active students in a small work group can therefore also pull along the less active or confused students in the group and thus contribute to better study environments for their student collegues.
Good group work requires meaningful group tasks
In the small group, group norms are quickly created that increase loyalty to the group’s common task. If there is such a task! It is important that the group actually has common tasks to work with. Participation in a course is by definition individual, which is why it is also required that the work tasks of the group is of such a nature that they really require cooperation and cannot easily be divided into puzzle pieces per participant. An important purpose of the small study groups is thus that they contribute to more active, goal-oriented (collaboration) study work. (*)
Counteract dropout
Group work also counteracts dropout by the fact that perceived relatedness in a small group increases social expectations – loyalty to the group. Students experience a greater need to explain to the group if they are lagging behind or considering dropping out of the course. They do not just dissapear…(*)
This can be especially important in distance education. The small group is perhaps the only arena where the student has direct, personal contact with other students during the course!
More direct teacher contact
In large student groups, the students actually get closer to the teacher if some of the study work takes place in small groups. Compared with whether the teacher should have a dialogue with each individual separately, fewer situations are required in the schedule to give the student the opportunity to have a dialogue directly with the teacher. The teacher’s supervision of a group becomes an opportunity when each individual can still experience a direct dialogue with the teacher. In that respect, group work is thus resource-efficient when designing a course.
… but also the risk of social exclusion
But group work also involves risks that can seriously jeopardize students’ learning:
All groups of individuals involve a social game where hierarchies are created and where individual members face the risk of social exclusion. A common reason for dropping out of studies is experiences of being left out, being marginalized, ignored or actively opposed. The social game in a study group or work group is a strong force that can sometimes overtone most things and mean very negative experiences for individuals and leave scars that remain long after the actual episodes.
Being marginalized in a small workgroup by other people where you have a one-on-one relationship has a stronger negative impact than being invisible in a larger group, where each individual is more anonymous. When we form small study groups in the large course group, the risk therefore increases that situations arise that are experienced as strongly negative by some of the students.
The group work form thus has several important advantages, but at the same time involves risks. When we teachers organize a course so that some work is done in groups, we increase the risk of such exclusion. Therefore, it is important that we are careful about how we use the group work form and take responsibility for dealing with situations where groups experience interpersonal conflicts or where we can see signs that a participant is suffering and seems to withdraw.
It is important that we make clear to ourselves what we want to achieve with the group work in the current situation, how we organize the group work, what kind of tasks we give the groups to work with, how we organize our support for them and how we handle the groups’ results, for example in examination.
References on the need for togetherness and internalization of group norms
Feldman, D. C. (1984). The development and enforcement of group norms. The Academy of Management Review, 9(1), 47–53.
Gagné, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self-determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(4), 331–362. (See e. g. pp. 336ff, the section on Basic psychological needs)
(*) Edited by Jansson, T., & Ljung, L. (2017). En pedagogisk modell i praktiken (Området projektledning vid Handelshögskolan i Karlstad) (A pedagogical model in practice (Project management area at the business college in Karlstad)). I M. Johansson & L. E. Johansson (Red.), Studentcentrerat lärande, bedömning och examination: Vol. 2017:01. Universitetspedagogiska enheten vid Karlstads universitet. (p. 23-24) (only in Swedish)