Group assignments are always challenging and it is very hard to predict how your group will perform – somewhere between rewarding and frustrating! This blog describes the experience of being a member of a group of three who created an online module about digital citizenship.

Once the group was established, I was encouraged that our group started communicating immediately through google docs but I was worried immediately that we had completely different perspectives of the task and we seemed to lack a common language for discussing how we would proceed. I thought about how students at school must feel when they are in a similar position – working with other students they normally don’t even speak to with the expectation of achieving outcomes. Frykedal and Samuelsson (2016) identified various processes that underpin students’ willingness to participate and the discomfort that group work can create.

Our first Zoom meeting made a big difference to the quality of our interactions and we agreed on a common platform for the task. Surprisingly after the meeting it seemed that team member (A) had a completely different interpretation to myself and team member (B) of our discussion and our way forward seemed confused – we were stuck!  Hofman and Mercer (2016, p. 412) discuss strategies used by teachers to deal with group work problems and their approach of striving for agreement seemed to resonate with our group dynamics when we met on Zoom again and established more familiarity with each other. The conversation relaxed and we seemed to finally move forward with some agreed understanding. I was relieved that we managed to coordinate our thoughts and effort to finalise a product after feeling that we didn’t really seem to have common goals. This experience has made me question many things about the group process and my participation in this particular task. I felt at times that no matter how hard I listened to or read other group members proposal, I found it difficult to understand how their ideas would fit into our overall themes. I think our different knowledge base and work experience contributed to our very different perspectives towards our topic and the language we used to describe what we were doing.

So many variables go into group dynamics and collaboration, I realise how difficult it can be for students participating in group work at school. Maybe students have more settled group dynamics and language in common when they embark on group learning? Pahamov (2018) has strategies for making group work effective that includes an inventory of strengths and weaknesses when choosing members of the group. My group did not choose its members nor did we know each other before we started the task. We were different ages with different experiences of teaching and the other two members had never worked as a teacher librarian.

This experience has made me more sensitized to the importance of a group being able to establish themselves as a group with a common approach very quickly in order to move forward. It has made me think about what tools or checks I could implement to maximise a positive learning experience for students embarking on group work in the future.

 

References

Forslund Frykedal, K., & Samuelsson, M. (2016). “What’s in It for Me?” A Study on Students’ Accommodation or Resistance during Group Work. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 60(5), 500–514.

 

Hofmann R.  & Mercer, N. (2016) Teacher interventions in small group work in secondary mathematics and science lessons, Language and Education, 30:5, 400-416. DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2015.1125363

 

Pahomov, L. (2018). Inventories, Confessionals, and Contracts: Strategies for Effective Group Work: Turn group work from a classroom management headache into a productive–and even joyful–experience. Educational Leadership, 76(1), 34–38.