home

Working as a group online tutorial
 * Is Groupwork worthwhile?**

According to Snowman, the main aims of education are threefold: Cognitive, Affective and Psychomotor Development(REFERENCE). Formal education has traditionally taken an unbalanced, paternalistic approach of 'giving' knowledge, rather than constructing it, of emphasising the rote portion of cognitive learning and regurgitation of taught knowledge at the expense of componential and critical understanding, psychomotor development, and, in particular, affective development. Why? Possibly because, as Snowman suggests, emotional intelligence training is tricky to implement. You can only work with what you've got.

Information is power, but whose version of the information is most powerful? The intact transmission of knowledge has long been a goal of predominant paradigms in maintaining the power status quo, Our knowlege rate grows and changes at an exponential rate. Most textbooks are out of date before they even make it through publishing. Change is our world's only constant, so to hold an unchangable curriculum or knowledge base is to cling to a crumbling procrustian bed.
 * Just the facts, Ma'am**

Lewis Thomas (1989) described 'errors' that arise in DNA as a 'Wonderful Mistake'. Those very variations - good, bad, or indifferent - which past education systems sought to assiduously iron out, generated the richness, diversity and improbability of our planet's various lifeforms. Variations in learning and understanding are equally 'wonderful' in creating new knowlege forms. Pooled knowledge and thought brainstorming are inductive benefits of inclusive practice that embraces student diversity. Groupwork, when done collaboratively utilising the skills of all members, splices the thoughts, abilities, and ideas of individuals to a new shared code and product. Members foster pruning, extinguishing or enhancing; transmitting and propagating the various proposed solutions into a unique group amalgumation where the sum could easily be better than the parts.

Groupwork is a challenge to an individuals' equilibrium and to society's status quo, which requires trust of a greater magnitude than might seem likely at first glance. It is not only a matter of student trusting self and student trusting student and student trusting teacher, but even more of teacher trusting student, of institution trusting teacher and community trusting institution. Online groupwork is an even bigger leap of faith. In the absence of emotional cues, of tone, gestures, and non-verbal communication, with the lack of immediacy and the potential for censorship, and of necessity the relative incompleteness of communication, online groupwork is a brave new world. Maybe digital natives are 'braver', or maybe they experience this interaction quite differently compared to digital immigrants.

1) Group work should enable all students to be challenged (recognising and catering for a range of abilities) 2) Decide on what you want students to gain from groupwork (focus), then choose the groups, they may be mixed ability or same ability (depending on group purpose) 3) Evaluate whether each group needs an adult to assist or will they be able to work independantly. (Can the zone of proximal development be extended with adult asistance,or would such interference threatent he group dynamics)
 * Guidelines for Small Group Work**

From p417/418 Snowman reading: 4 questions for discussion:


 * 1. Is cooperative learning in small groups effective? Is it used too much, too little, or not enough in schools? Justify...**

The benefits of cooperative learning in small groups outweigh the frustrations for all concerned if a number of conditions are met. These include: underpinned by COMMUNICATION: frequent, timely, as complete as possible and understood by all.
 * shared clarity of purpose
 * shared clarity of direction/outcome
 * shared clarity of strategy
 * shared clarity of timeline
 * shared understanding of individual action/role within group
 * appropriate pace, resources, skills and knowledge to achieve the above

Group work is not used enough because to meet the above conditions requires a big input for little initial result obvious. The big outputs are a longer term process/outcome, and therefore those who put in the hard yards frequently fail to reap the rewards of their efforts in the short term. Long term payoffs are less readily recognised and quantified in many domains including political, educational and cultural. Recognising 'approximate' (as per Bandura) groupwork skills and making them transparent and measurable would start to create an evidence-base for developing groupwork skills. This is not simply the importance of social learning in development, (Vygotsky, Piaget etc), but also the transferability of such skills to many areas of life - family, work, leisure, conflict resolution, and personal development.


 * 2. Have you found yourself in Mia's position? (Groupwork with people who did not pull their weight?)**

Frequently, but throughout our society there are always individuals who expect others to cary them, whether from necessity or laziness. The extreme frustration this engenders has been offset over time by skills acquired as a result, but this longitudinal perspective is partly a result of time on the planet (age!).Groupwork problems are better managed by making transparent the typical group dynamics summarised as:

FORMING: getting to know each other and developing roles within the group STORMING: not getting on during the process of developing shared understanding NORMING: uniting to develop a cohesive vision of group purpose and sense of individual membership/role within the group PERFORMING: committing to/actioning individual role within group whole (REFERENCE) This is a circular process in practice, rather than linear arrangement suggested in theory.

Although E.Q. is harder to measure than I.Q., it is vital to health and happiness of individuals and of society. The Positions Vacant in most newspapers reveal that employers are seeking candidates with "people skills"; negotiation, communication, interpersonal skills etc. Our aim should be holistic education, considering all the interating needs of the student, not just the easily measured ones. A good start is to teach students the skills they need for groupwork; turntaking, leadership, delegation, tolerance of different POV, negotiation and compromise, non-judgemental communication and sensitivity.
 * 3. Can you furnish a good argument for more groupwork in school?**

I believe in carrots. Incentives would provide a short term goal for all investing extra effort, providing a worthwhile and obvious intermediate step towards the often unseen longterm goal.If the incentives also benefited the students, there would be more push to make the groupwork effective. This positive feedback to teachers would justify their extra effort and create its own impetous to kep the groupwork prominant in the curriculum.
 * Would incentives to participation in action research as a school/principal/teacher encourage more investment in groupwork?**


 * 4. Less?**

Not all learning is suited to group interaction, so pushing the pendulum too far in the direction of groupwork is not desirable. Unlikely anyway, since groupwork is an inconvenient strategy until a critical mass of knowledge, skills and experience is acquired. Like getting fit: being fit is fun; getting fit is hard work. Many people never make it beyond the three month physiological barrier, when all those mitochondria populations, new blood vessels etc get up and running and start making it easy to pump out lots of lovely endorphins without the psychological and physical pain associated with getting there.


 * Summary**

Groupwork takes more effort and commitment to make it effective. It relies on universal respect, commitment and communication of team members, which are even harder to achieve with the limitations of an online group. Even so, the commitment to groupwork is a step towards more wholistic education, considering the whole person and their place in society.