Day 25: cooperation

The ideal collaboration between students–what would it look like?

     Some kids love group work, some kids hate it. Group work is a bit like society, you take a bunch of people and throw them together, you set them a common goal and hope for the best. In every group there will be workers, jokers, whiners, slackers and wanderers, just like in real life and to make it work you need either a miracle or some excellent rules of collaboration.
     I have sat through my share of group meetings and have to admit that more often than not they are a complete waste of time unless the goal is very concrete, the team very focused and the rules of play very clear. The same, I believe goes for students. 
     So in my class, when we do group work, I make sure:
- the groups are made up of students with different strengths and weaknesses.
- the end product is very clearly defined, as is the process.
- the work is evenly distributed and deadlines are clear
- the norms of collaboration are posted clearly for everyone to see, and the students have been taught to respect them.
     But still things never go according to plan, though I believe that is part of the process. Plans and projects almost never work out 100% in life either, so developing coping skills is very important. How do you compensate when someone messes up. You also need diplomacy when dealing with the reluctant, or determination when encouraging the slackers. Or even understanding just the simple fact that there will always be people in life who will avoid responsibility so you have to learn to work that into your game plan. And unless you're a loner, you'll have to live with all of that.
Group work is not just about the result. It is a learning process, a valuable lesson for my students' future careers. It's about learning to understand how they function in a group, how the group functions together and what happens when there are breakdowns in communication. Ideal collaboration remains an ideal, but trying to achieve it needs to be part of education for the benefit of the students and society.