Learning in Groups

Rob Brooks, School of Biological, Earth and Environmenal Sciences
Michele Scoufis, Learning and Teaching @ UNSW
Iain McAlpine, EDTeC

Learning and working effectively as part of a team or group is an extremely important skill, and one that you will refine and use throughout your working life. As with many skills, however, there is more to it than meets the eye. Group projects should be among the most valuable and rewarding learning experiences. For many students, however, they are also among the most frustrating. Here are some pointers to help you work effectively on your group tasks and assignments. These are mostly general principles that you should apply to group work here, in other courses and in the workplace.

• Why we use group learning tasks
• Skills in group work
• Interpersonal skills and considerations
• Managing the process
• Collaborative writing
• Monitoring group effectiveness / overcoming problems
• Marks
• Teamwork checklist

Why we use group learning tasks

Learning in groups means that you need to share your knowledge and ideas with other students. There are two principal ways that you benefit from doing this; you need to think carefully about your own ideas in order to explain them to others (one of the best ways to learn something is to try to explain it to someone else), and you expand your own awareness by taking account of the knowledge and ideas of others. When you work as a group on a project or assignment, then you have the opportunity to draw on the different strengths of group members, to produce a more extensive and higher quality project or assignment than you could complete on your own.

To undertake group learning tasks effectively you need to learn some skills in group work. Group skills are an extremely important part of your professional development. In most professions people are required to work in multidisciplinary project teams or teams with a responsibility for a specific task. Many professional organisations and employer groups stress the importance of interpersonal and group skills, such as communication, negotiation, problem solving, and teamwork. These skills can be as important as your subject knowledge in enabling you to be an effective professional. Learning in groups is an opportunity to develop the skills necessary to work in, and lead, project teams.

It is important to realise that this kind of group work is actually an ongoing process of generating ideas and planning as a group, working as an individual to carry out parts of that plan and then communicating as a group to draw the individual components together and plan the next step.

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Skills in group work

Group work requires both interpersonal and process management skills. Group work has been included in this course to provide a safe environment in which you can try out new ideas and practices and learn some group skills. Some of the skills you need to develop are outlined below. You will, however, discover some others for yourself.

Interpersonal skills

• Building positive working relationships

• Communicating effectively in meetings

• Negotiating to agree on tasks and resolve conflicts

• Accommodating people with different cultural orientations and work habits

Process management skills

• Identifying group goals and dividing work

• Planning and complying with meeting schedules and deadlines

• Managing time to meet group expectations

• Monitoring group processes and intervening to correct problems

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Interpersonal skills and considerations

Seek to understand before seeking to be understood.

S. R. Covey

Take some time early on to chat with and get to know each of your group mates.� The better you know one another and the more comfortable you are communicating with one another, the more effectively you will be able to work together. The online discussion set up for your group can be used to exchange information about backgrounds and interests as an icebreaker that elicits information that may not normally be available. The online discussion often helps people who are shy or reluctant to speak in a conversational way.

The only differences between your group and most other relationships you have are that you probably had little or no choice of your group mates, and you may have to produce several pieces of work in this group. It is best to get over these differences quickly: you will not have much choice of your team mates in the workplace and you will be under considerably more pressure there to be productive.

As with any relationship, you need to build a culture of mutual respect within your group. Group members must feel comfortable voicing their opinions, and that these opinions will be listened to. They must feel that all group members are contributing positively to the tasks by keeping to agreed procedures and plans and producing good quality work, on time. Last, they must feel that their feelings are being considered by team members, yet the goals and objectives of the group are not being compromised to accommodate the whim or the wants of a few members. These interpersonal considerations are a product of being considerate, polite and positive in your group interactions and of managing the process of group work effectively.

It is important to make sure that you both express your views and listen to others. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with your group mates, no matter how confident they may seem to be about what they are saying.� When you disagree, be constructive and focus on the issue rather than the person. Likewise when someone disagrees with you, respect what they are saying and the risk that they took in expressing their opinion. Try to find a way forward that everybody can agree to and that isn�t the opinion of just one confident or outspoken member.

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Managing the process

Effective group work does not happen by accident. It involves deliberate effort, and because there are many people involved it must not be left up to memory; good note taking is essential. Following these steps will help you and your group to work effectively together.

1. Have clear objectives. At each stage you should try to agree on goals. These include a timetable for progress on the project as well as more immediate goals (e.g. to agree on an approach to the assignment by Friday). Each meeting or discussion should also begin with a goal in mind (e.g. to come up with a list of tasks that need to be done).

2. Set ground rules. Discussions can become disorderly and can discourage shyer group members from participating if you don�t have procedures in place for encouraging discussion, coming to resolution without becoming repetitive, and resolving differences of opinion. Set rules at the outset and modify them as necessary along the way. An interesting rule that one group made was that anybody who missed a meeting would buy the rest of the group a cup of coffee from the coffee shop. Nobody ever missed a meeting after that.

3. Communicate efficiently. Make sure you communicate regularly with group members. Try to be clear and positive in what you say without going on or being repetitive.

4. Build consensus. People work together most effectively when they are working toward a goal that they have agreed to. Ensure that everyone has a say, even if you have to take time to get more withdrawn members to say something. Make sure you listen to everyone�s ideas and then try to come to an agreement that everyone shares and has contributed to.

5. Define roles. Split the work to be done into different tasks that make use of individual�s strengths. Having roles both in the execution of your tasks and in meetings / discussions (e.g. Arani is responsible for summarising discussions, Joseph for ensuring everybody has a say and accepts resolutions etc.) can help to make a happy, effective team. See Sharing and Organising Work for more information.

6. Clarify. When a decision is made, this must be clarified in such a way that everyone is absolutely clear on what has been agreed, including deadlines.

7. Keep good records. Communicating on the online discussion for your group provides a good record of discussion. Try to summarise face-to-face discussions and especially decisions, and post them to the online discussion so that you can refer back to them. This includes lists of who has agreed to do what.

8. Stick to the plan. If you agreed to do something as part of the plan, then do it. Your group are relying on you to do what you said you would do � not what you felt like doing. If you think the plan should be revised, then discuss this.

9. Monitor progress and stick to deadlines. As a group, discuss progress in relation to your timetable and deadlines. Make sure that you personally meet deadlines to avoid letting your group down.

An extremely useful tool to help with the steps above is a contract. Within the first week of each group task you and your group will need to negotiate and agree to a contract. In this signed agreement, you will outline what you are going to do, who is going to do what, and by when. As a guide to negotiating your group contracts a contract proforma has been prepared in RichText format.

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Collaborative writing

Writing collaboratively is one of the trickiest parts of group work. There are many ways to do this, and your group will have to resolve how to divide the work of writing, collating, editing and putting the final touches on your work. Writing by committee (six people crowded around a keyboard) is a surefire recipe for conflict and lack of progress. Try to divide the initial writing into tasks; the assignment structures we have given you fall nicely into smaller tasks already. Once the first drafts of the components have been written, circulate all the components and read them. You will probably need to get together to discuss how to marry them together so that they are consistent with one another. Perhaps members who were not involved in the initial writing can do some of this work. Then edit, improve and polish the manuscript.

Circulate the files as WebCT attachments. Ensure that only one person is working on the attachment at once, and that everybody knows who has and is working on the current version; otherwise it becomes difficult to merge the various changes that different editors make. Each time you work on the document, use a new, informative file extension and date so that you can keep track of drafts. For example �report.wpd� is practically useless, whereas �marie_5feb.wpd� tells all that this is the version that Marie edited on 5 Feb.

One approach that groups report works very well is for somebody to begin the document, and then for members to take turns adding to the text, each with a different colour text. Each time the assignment is passed on it is posted as an attachment to the group discussion area. The whole group can then see how things are progressing and you have a sense of who has added what. In the final edits, styles are unified and the text is converted to uniform black before submission.

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Monitoring group effectiveness / overcoming problems

The checklist at the end of this document provides a list of common obstacles to effective group work. Use it regularly to monitor how you are working together and to identify problems before they get out of hand. If major problems and tensions arise within your group, use it to identify where things may be going wrong. First answer each question about yourself, then answer it about the group as a whole. Then get together as a group and discuss where each of you think there may be problems and consider how you might overcome these problems.

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Marks

Group tasks and assignments may mean that marks are assigned to everybody in the group based on the result for the whole group. It is in everybody's interest to ensure an effective contribution from all group members, to make sure that the finished assignment is of high quality.

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Teamwork Checklist

You should complete this exercise reasonably regularly in order to monitor and improve how effectively your group is working.

Each member should complete this checklist. You will need time to reflect in order to make this a worthwhile exercise.

1. Answer each question regarding your own performance in the group.
2. Answer each question regarding the rest of the group.
3. Get together with your whole group and discuss where you think any problems are arising.
4. Discuss what you are going to do to overcome these problems.

This checklist is based on one by Sharon Fraser in Scoufis (2000).

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Acknowledgement

This document is adapted from a course handout prepared by Rob Brooks, UNSW, for a course in Evolution and Biology. The handout was developed with assistance from Michele Scoufis, Iain McAlpine, Sue Starfield and Will Rifkin, and a UNSW Vice Chancellor�s Teaching and Research Fellowship.

References

Chambers, A., Fardouly, N. & McAlpine, I. 2002. Getting Started with Online Courses. EDTeC, The University of New South Wales.

Gibbs, G. (1994). Learning in Teams: A student Manual. Oxford: The Oxford Centre for Staff Development.

Scoufis, M. 2000. Integrating Graduate Attributes into the Undergraduate Curricula. University of Western Sydney. (ISBN 1863418725).