TRANSCRIPT: How To Work In Groups:

Creating A Productive & Positive Learning Experience

Speaker: Laurie Hazard

How To Work In Groups: Creating A Productive & Positive Learning Experience

My name is Laurie Hazard, and I'm a researcher and practitioner in the field of Student Success. My area of research is focused on student habits, attitudes, and personality traits that contribute to student success and academic achievement. Most people think of learning as a singular, individual, isolated activity; but today, we're going to talk about the power of learning in groups and how working and learning in groups can greatly enhance your achievements.

Goals For Today

The goals for today are to talk about the definition and types of group learning, the advantages of group learning; and of course we'll have to cover the disadvantages of group learning. We'll discuss group dynamics and processes, the stages of group development, how to establish group rules when you're getting together with classmates to work on different kinds of projects, and tips and strategies for running effective group meetings.

What Is Group Learning

So what is group learning?

Group learning is when students form groups to work together on common academic goals, to solve problems, to execute projects, to do research, and to collaborate on classwork. Group learning allows students to make meaning for themselves and to learn from each other. The idea here is that more learning can take place when you rely on what a group of people know rather than what one individual knows. In group learning, the goal might be to learn a collective body of knowledge.

Types Of Group Learning

What types of group learning will you encounter in college?

You will experience group projects, group papers, study groups, and group work in the classroom. You will likely also encounter group learning outside of the classroom, such as planning events and trips for student organizations that you might join. Even on your athletic teams and intramural sports, you will experience group learning.

Disadvantages Of Group Work

You will find that there are both advantages and disadvantages of working in a group. First, let's take a moment to brainstorm the potential pitfalls and challenges of working with other students in a group. What are those disadvantages?

What are the disadvantages of group learning? How does your list compare to mine?

Number one is social loafing. This is when one of your group members can get a little bit lazy and rely on the other group members to do most of the work.

There could be scheduling challenges. One person could derail the efforts of the entire group by being rude, unfocused, or maybe even unprepared for your group meeting.

Everyone has to contribute equally to get the full benefits of working in a group. One or two people could take over and be a little bit aggressive.

Misunderstanding and communication problems can occur when you're working with a group of people.

What can also happen is socializing instead of focusing on the task at hand.

Study sessions can become (groaning) sessions. You can start complaining about things.

Are there other disadvantages of group learning? What else?

Advantages Of Group Work

The good news is with a little bit of effort, you can figure out how to work well in a group because there are a lot of advantages of group learning. Take a moment to brainstorm what you believe are the advantages to group learning.

There are clear advantages to group learning.

There's an old proverb that says, "Many hands make light work." What that means is if you can work together, you can make your work less for everybody involved.

Talking with each other and sharing ideas allows you to learn from each other. Discussing hard concepts and figuring out why one person's perspective differs from another's helps you learn more.

You can cover a lot more information in a class if you're working with other people.

Learning in a group means sharing your talents and allowing each group member's strengths to compensate for the other members' challenges. Working in a group allows for diverse points of views and ideas.

Working together is more fun. You can encourage and support your group members.

Group Dynamics

First, we're going to delve into the idea of group dynamics. What you want to do is consider your role within a group. The way to do that is to reflect on the first group that you had membership in, and that's your family. You'll probably notice that each one of your family members takes on a different role in your family based on whether they're the oldest child, the middle child.

So what I want you to do right now is reflect on your role within your family.

Leader Types

Another perspective on thinking about your role within the group is if you are in a group of people, do you tend to be the leader or the follower?

Now, in group projects in college, think about this. Sometimes a professor will appoint a leader, and it's very clear to the group who's supposed to be the leader and who's supposed to organize the logistics and the activities. Sometimes in a group if a leader is not appointed, there tends to be an emergent leader. Somebody naturally emerges as the leader of the group.

Communication Style

Other things to consider when you're in a group situation is your communication style, and that often develops within your family system and in the family context.

When I reflect on my family, I can very clearly remember when my fiancé met my family. After he left our house, he said, "Gee, Laurie, you come from the loud family." Indeed, in my family, in order to be heard we tend to interrupt each other. What happens is we tend to speak more and more loudly. So I come from a family of interrupters. So as a member of a group, I have to be really reflective about the fact that I might tend to interrupt when I'm in a group.

You will also want to consider are you a talker or a listener. Clearly, in my family I emerged as a talker; and my younger sister was the listener.

Are you aware of your speech rate and volume?

I know I tend to be a fast talker. So when I'm in a group, I have to be really thoughtful and mindful of slowing...down...my...speech rate.

In a group, you want to be clear whether or not you're understood; and in order to figure out whether your group members are understanding you, you're going to have to practice active listening skills.

Reflection

I'm going to share a story with you about a time when I came to understand my communication style a little bit better. It happened when I was in college. After a chemistry exam, a group of us were standing outside of the lecture hall doing what students typically do...discussing what did you get on the test. We were getting very passionate in our discussion, and I started asking people questions about their exam performance. I was getting excited and I was getting animated. I noticed that the young woman that I was talking to who didn't know me very much started to back off. After she walked away, I turned to my friend and I said, "What was her problem?"

My friend said, "Laurie, when you get excited about something, you get really loud and passionate." It was probably the first time that somebody gave me reflective feedback on my communication style. In my reflection, I realized that that communication style grew out of my family system and the way that we interacted with each other.

So what I want you to do is reflect on two questions...

One is, think of a communication habit that was established in your family; and perhaps it's a habit that you still practice today.

Then I want you to identify a piece of reflective feedback that you've received from somebody about your communication style. Once you've thought about the answer to both of those questions, think about how might that affect you when you're working in a group...particularly with people who you don't know very well.

5 Stages Of Group Development

In addition to considering some of the perspectives of working and learning in a group...like your communication style and whether you're an emergent leader, whether you're a listener or a talker...what we're going to talk about now are the stages of group development. This is a sociology model, and it's called Tuckman's model.

When groups come together, they go through five natural stages of group development. Those five stages are forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.

Forming (Stage 1)

Let's go through the five stages of group development in a little bit more detail. The first one is forming. Forming is when a group gets together to work toward a collective goal. At this point in the stages of group development, you will be determining your group member strengths and challenges.

So let's say the collective goal is writing a group research project. What you would in your forming session is determine which group member is the best at doing research, which group member is the best at composing, and who's the best at editing, for example.

Storming is the second stage of group development. When you get together with a group of people, initially you'll probably be having a lot of fun. That's called the honeymoon phase; but the honeymoon phase will end, and conflicts will arise, and the group will have to learn how to resolve them.

Storming (Stage 2)

Let's say in the storming stage you're deciding where the best place for the group to meet is. One person wants to meet in the Residence Hall. Another person wants to meet at a restaurant. Another person wants to meet in the library, and you can't seem to resolve that conflict. That would be an example of the storming stage.

Conflict Resolution Skills

Let's say in the storming stage, you can't seem to resolve your conflict. You're going to have to learn how to practice conflict resolution skills. If you have a group member, for example, who seems to be coming late to your group meetings all the time and it's affecting your productivity, you're going to have to figure out how to solve that problem. It's probably not a good idea to go up to that group member and say, "This is so aggravating that you're late all the time!" Approaching somebody like that is going to put them on the defensive.

There's a really basic conflict resolution strategy that looks like this...I feel blank when you blank. So let's apply it to that example. Instead of going at somebody aggressively when they're late, you might want to practice the conflict resolution skill like this...I feel anxious when you're late for our group meetings. I only have an hour because I have a class right after this. So if we could figure out a better time that works for all of us to meet, that would really be helpful to me.

Norming (Stage 3)

The third stage of group development is norming. During the norming stage, the group agrees on guiding principles or ground rules that each member must abide by for the group to function effectively.

The way to avoid conflicts during your storming stage is to do something very intentional during your norming stage.

If during this norming stage you can come up with some guiding principles...like each member is going to be to the group meeting on time, each member is going to come to the group meeting having done the work that they were assigned to do, and each group member is going to practice conflict resolution skills and not interrupt each other...you can move along the norming stage much more quickly and move on to the next stage, which is performing.

Performing (Stage 4)

So the performing stage is when all the norms or rules for your group is set, and the group can get together and be effective and productive. So let's dig a little bit deeper into the performing stage. When you are performing, each group member will...

Know what his or her job is.

They'll feel a sense of collective responsibility to the group.

They will be dependable, and you'll know that you can depend on each of your members.

Each group member will be willing to be flexible and help out and support the other members.

Each group member will be prepared and focused.

They will follow through, and hopefully they'll be energetic and enthusiastic about the task at hand.

Adjourning (Stage 5)

Adjourning is when your group learning experience is coming to closure. So the adjourning stage establishes closure for the particular project or group meeting at hand. In this stage, it's a collective decision. The group must decide collectively and agree when the job is done.

Group Learning Experiences

When we got started, I identified a couple of different group learning experiences that you will encounter in college. In order to be effective with those group learning experiences, you have to establish what the task is at hand. When you've determined what the task is, you will have to establish ground rules and clarifying your goals.

It could be that you're getting together with a group from your class on reviewing weekly notes and readings. It could be that you're getting together with a group to study with a test or exam, or it could be that you're doing a group project.

Establishing Ground Rules

So let's talk about one example like a study group if you were going to go about establishing ground rules for your study group. The first question you might ask is, "How many members should be in a study group?"

In establishing ground rules, you'll want to determine where should you meet. This often comes up in the storming stage. You might be in disagreement about whether to meet in a library, a restaurant, the cafeteria, or your Residence Hall. So you're going to have to determine where you should meet right from the get-go.

Another ground rule to figure out right from the beginning is how long should we meet for the task at hand, and how often should we meet? Well, that depends. It depends on the purpose of your group meeting and the attention span of the group members. It also depends on the timeline if you are, for example, working on a group project in class that's due in two weeks or a month or at the end of the semester.

Other ground rules you might consider are the structure of the meeting. What are the expectations of the group members? For example, will one person facilitate the meeting? Will another person ensure that each member has an opportunity to say what's on their minds?

Studying In Groups

So if we take the concrete example of studying in groups, let's consider this. It's certainly good to study alone. It's better if you study with two people, but it's awesome if you learn how to effectively study in groups.

Study Groups

So let's talk about study groups because perhaps that is the type of group you'll encounter most when you're in college. A study group is a committed and cooperative group of students who share the same goals; that is, to learn the material in the most effective and efficient way.

Why Study In Groups?

So why study in groups?

The process of learning in groups helps students with all three learning styles. Let's consider them.

If you're an auditory learner and you learn best by hearing, listening to others discuss concepts from your classes and information will support you.

If you're a visual learner, you can look at your other group members' notes. You can create study sheets or cards together, and you can even annotate your tasks.

Kinesthetic learners like to learn by doing. In a group, if you write out your ideas, type notes over again, draw on the board, and create models, you'll be crossing over your kinesthetic learning study.

Considerations

So if you are going to decide to form a study group for one of your classes, you'll want to consider a variety of issues. The first one is how many people should be in the group. My recommendation is four to six people. If it gets too large, people will begin to get left out. If it's too small, there's probably not enough brainpower; and it's too easy to get offtrack.

Who To Enlist?

So who do you want to enlist to be in your study group?

Probably those with shared motivation and commitment. You'll want to enlist people who stay alert in class. They take notes. They ask and answer questions. You'll also want to think about including classmates that are both behind and ahead of you in your own learning so there's a variety of ideas that are brought to the table.

Other Considerations

This topic keeps coming up as an issue... where should you get together and do your group work?

If it's a study group, a place with no distractions is probably best; but you'll also want an area where you all have room to spread out.

Another issue is how long should the meeting be?

My recommendation is no more than two or three hours at a time. Otherwise people's attention spans will start to wane. You'll want to have a time limit to help the group focus and collectively decide on that.

When should you meet?

I would recommend deciding on a regular day and time, scheduling it in using your time management strategies, and stick to it.

What Do Meetings Look Like?

So in the study group, what might the meetings look like?

Well, you could do two different methods. One is prepare to go to the group meeting and then quiz each other, or you could divide the group up and teach other and then come back together. '

Study Group Strategies

There are two other strategies for study groups. You may consider doing a meeting where you do a note review and another meeting where you do a reading review. The note review may be one person begins to read the notes that they took in class, and then you have stop points where everybody else shares information that others might have missed. That way, you have a collection of five sets of notes instead of just one set of notes.

A reading review might look like each group member brings an outline of a chapter, and you share the information that you unearthed when you each did your reading separately and you bring your ideas together.

Characteristics Of Successful Study Groups

So earlier we talked about the performing stage and what are the characteristics of the performing stage in group work in general. Now we're going to talk about the characteristics of a successful study group.

One is all group members contribute to the discussion.

Number two is group members actively listen to each other without interrupting, and that would be hard for me. Only one group member should speak at a time.

Group members will work to resolve problems raised by members.

Group members should be prompt and come prepared to work.

The group should stay on task with respect to its agenda.

Always group members should show respect for each other.

Group members should always feel free to give each other reflective feedback, and as a group member, you should be open to receiving that feedback and adjusting your behavior.

Group members should feel comfortable revealing their strengths and challenges to each other so you can work on them and support each other.

Group members should always feel free to ask each other questions.

A concrete practical piece of advice is at the end of each study session, an agenda including specific group members' responsibilities for the next session should be created.

Above all, a positive attitude that we can do this together should always be maintained.

Conclusion

College students often think of learning as a solitary activity, but it doesn't have to be if you can master all of the different advantages of working and learning together in groups and take advantage of them to enhance your learning and achievement in college.