Group work in school

I believe I have mentioned this here before, but in case I haven't I am studying to become a history teacher. As such while in classes I am not only studying the subject in which I am enrolled, but the methods professors employ to get their lessons across. Sometimes I see really good and creative ways of teaching the material, other times I wonder how these people graduated from their credentialing program. As such I feel it would be beneficial for me to start keeping track of these thoughts and what a better place to do it than here. If education theory is not your thing, here is your cue to head for the hills. Expect similar posts on this topic in the future.

Today's topic is group work. Disclaimer, I am a curmudgeonly butt hole who does not enjoy working with others in school settings because my experience has been that nobody cares about the class enough to participate and I am left shouldering between a large portion of, and the whole project to keep my grade afloat. That being said, I completely understand the value of group work and support it's use as an educational tool if implemented correctly. My mythology and folklore professor is a shining example of how to do it wrong so we shall be using them as a case study for this topic. I'll give you a bit of background on how the class functions to set the scene before we proceed. It is a classified as a Literature class and as such there is a lot of reading assigned and expected to be done before the next class meeting. We are in a tiny room with FAR too many students packed in like sardines. Class meetings are 2 and a half hours long twice a week, about a fifth of the time spent on lecture and the other four fifths are reserved for group discussion and group quizzes/ tests.

First and foremost this is a college course and I feel like I am back in high school again due to the rowdiness of the class, the intense amount of swearing by students, the willingness for the teacher to completely ignore both issues is unacceptable. Already we're off to a bad start, but that's just a surface problem that by itself is negligible. Lectures are semi-pointless in this class because the professor goes far too quickly for you to take notes, basically only reads what are on the power point slides, and posts the slides online at the end of the week. Again, bad form, but not a big deal. What has been bothering me about this class so far is the structure of the group work. Citing the first problem I listed, class discussions are chaotic and go practically nowhere. Class discussions only work if the moderator (i.e. the professor/teacher) is doing their job. I have only had one teacher in all of my years moderate a class discussion well and make it an enjoyable experience hearing other peoples opinions in a respectable manner even if I didn't always agree. As a moderator you have two big responsibilities, 1) You do not proceed until you have quiet, you cannot have a discussion if there are other people talking over you it's disrespectful, distracting and extremely unprofessional. 2) You keep the discussion on track, there are going to be people who aren't well versed in the topic enough to discuss it with everyone, that's fine. Discussion facilitates understanding and some just don't want to, or can't participate. However when you have people derailing the conversation going off on pseudo-intellectual tangents, as the professor it is your job to stop these tangents, and re-align the discussion with the topic at hand.

Now comes the biggest problem and the reason I sat down to write this in the first place, group tests and quizzes. As a lit class, the need for textual support to back up your answers is both understandable and necessary. Group tests and quizzes are valuable in theory because they allow students to bounce ideas off of each other and bring about conclusions that they would reach themselves eventually, but in a shorter amount of time. However, if you administer tests and quizzes in groups with time limitations so stringent that it is required that students must break up the questions and work on them individually to finish on time, the whole point of this method becomes moot. Add to that the fact that individuals are graded as a group in this instance where they only answered about one-sixth of the questions and you run into a very large problem. Those who did not do the reading will bring down the score of the group, and those who did will carry those who did not care enough to try. Tests and quizzes are "supposed" to be a measure of a students knowledge on the subject, by administering tests and quizzes in this way you are not accurately gauging the students who did not do the work adequately and you are punishing those who did do the work, but just so happened to get put in a group with those who did not. I could see an argument for this method being that it helps deal with time constraints put on by the bulk of material that must be covered in such a short amount of time. To that I would say BS. An average quiz is 12 questions and groups usually brake off into about 6 people. As such this allows 2 questions per person and with the time allotted to give a satisfactory answer, 2 questions is about that max any one person can do, maybe 3 if your are a speed writer. A perfectly fair solution would be to randomly assign 2 questions to each student from the 12 question quiz and keep everything on an individual basis. Heck, if someone finishes early, allow them to answer a remaining question for extra credit. This is the same amount of questions we are answering now, the only difference is that everyone is responsible for there own work and no one suffers because of a bad group member. By randomizing who get's what questions it is still fair because every question can be potentially assigned and therefore the students must be prepared to address all of the material assigned even if they only engage with a small portion of it.

To wrap things up group work is hard to implement correctly, that being said it is stressful and counter-productive on students when it is implemented incorrectly. When I become a teacher, unless I am mandated to do things otherwise, the primary focus of my assignments will be based on an individuals contribution rather than that of a group. Things just seem more fair that way.