Introduction
Group work is the art of working together in a group so as to achieve unity goals, or to maximize each others learning in the case of students. The instructional use of groups among students to maximize learning among students is referred to as cooperative learning (Johnson, Johnson & Smith, 1991). In this type of learning, students can work together and benefit from each others learning in skill and work or any other benefits. In this type of learning, positive interdependence is also necessary to ensure that every member cooperates and participates and that all are accountable for the final results through group and individual accountability. A way to ensure this is by having a learning process that is very well structured and organized. Forms of implementing cooperative learning in schools emerge as informal and formal corporative groups. In order to ensure achieving the desired results in a proper manner, the teacher must be directly and indirectly involved in the formulation of the group, passing of the necessary knowledge, advising and intervening where necessary, monitoring and evaluating individual and group performance. This paper analyzes group work by mainly focusing on the question of whether it is effective in the learning environment. The research will analyze various aspects of teamwork and types of group organization and how it can be achieved best for the benefit of the learners.
Problem Statement
While group work is important in enhancing learning amongst students through learning from each other, independence amongst the learners is important so as to foster good and improved results through competition. Lax among students and group members can result from group work if no proper measures are put in place. Group working can neither be eliminated as merely unnecessary nor can it be implemented without necessary measures that will ensure that it achieves the best results. It is now evident that team learning and teamwork are important in the organizational world of business, politics, the army, teaching, and other sectors. Fostering team learning helps achieve important goals where unhealthy competition may arise, or even where competition cannot achieve good or desired results. Emphasizing group work is an important step towards helping individuals learn together and from one another both for present needs and for future tasks in leadership and other positions, but may sometimes result in lax situations where some individuals work for others and others only wait for the results. This means that group work must be controlled or implemented in a certain way in order to achieve the best results.
Research Questions
Historically, man has worked together in groups to achieve quantity production, increase efficiency, enjoy mutual contact and social cooperation, promote peace and culture, fight for his rights, and achieve what individuals cannot achieve easily or at all on their own. Group work mostly referred to as teamwork, holds a very high potential for carrying out various tasks, whether in the business arena, political, education or military, or any other type of assignment. The importance of independence that is instilled in the learning systems in this education system cannot be underestimated even in the strength of teamwork. Independence will ensure that the best students are rewarded and recognized in society and this is one way of encouraging personal hard work and diligence. The result of emphasizing individualism and independence amongst people is that it encourages competition which is necessary for achieving good and improved results within that system. Education is a means of preparing students for the tasks ahead; in the military, business, teaching, and leadership. These organizations require that teamwork be a constituent of the whole structure. How, and to what extent does group work help learning? Does it help after all in the learning system to emphasize group or teamwork as a means of preparing students for future tasks?
Most of the current educational systems emphasize this important aspect. Is it possible to merge independence and teamwork in the learning environment? How best can they be merged if this is possible? While the structure of academic learning emphasizes the importance of the two, what does teamwork contribute to learning?
Literature Review
Over the last 90 years, research has compared the effectiveness of individualistic, competitive, and cooperative efforts through experimental and correlational studies. It would be expected according to Smith (1995) that these studies would show the benefits of cooperative learning groups; ease of remembrance, more learning, and a better understanding of the learning material; and the learners feeling better of themselves and their colleagues. In addition, the students become socially competent, have committed and positive peer relationships, become highly psychologically healthy and achieve increased productivity.
Group participation in the learning process through solving problems in a group, talking through learning material together, and working together has been attached to benefits which include boosting student participation that improves critical thinking and problem solving (McKeachie, et a,., 1986). In addition, group work can help students stick to and enjoy learning through social networking and encouraging participation of the students in the learning process. The two major reasons identified as causing dropouts from schools are the failure of the victims to establishing a social network and being unable to participate in classroom learning according to Tinto (1994) and Smith (1995). Therefore, group work may foster not only learning but also help students stay at school. Smith adds that peer relationships have been shown by research and practitioners to be important in contributing to success at school whereas failure results from the alienation and isolating of students.
Cooperative learning has been encouraged in the traditional as well as the modern learning classes through different types of cooperative learning. These include formal and informal methods. Base groups are long-term based and ensure that support necessary for the individual members to succeed in course or college is provided. Formal cooperative learning groups may be necessary where there is a need to master the concept and procedural contents in the classroom while informal cooperative learning groups may last from few minutes to one class period and help boost understanding.
Methodology
The research uses previously conducted research studies to build consensus on the need for group work, the importance of accomplishing assignments through group work, the disadvantages of group work, and how best results can be achieved or situations be improved to ensure proper groups are formulated and structured. This research uses secondary sources such as books on the subject of group work and related subjects such as cooperative learning and team learning.
In order to prove whether group work is helpful, the student will carry out a research study on a group of thirty students from the school who will fill in the questionnaires to identify the causes, effects, and results of group work on individual and group learning. The student will also be required to fill in questions, which will be used to access the interest of individuals for groups, teacher contribution, and assistance.
Statistical methods will be used to analyze the collective data, and the quantitive and qualitative approaches will also be used to link factors such as working in groups and the student interest for group work. The analysis will seek to determine whether group work is still necessary for achieving future team learning and acting skills based on the students’ past experiences with groups and their expectations. The study analysis will also seek to access the contribution of group work in learning by tracking group results for the participants. The study will conclude how best group work can be ensured without denying the students the necessary skills to achieve interdependence, and how best groups should be structured to achieve the desired results.
Discussion of possible findings
Group work is very essential in achieving learning. The philosophy of group work has widely been exploited in all areas for different purposes. In learning, group work can assist students through establishing social networking, an easier and better understanding of the contents, taking in more content, creative and general thinking among other ways. The value of the group depends on the individual contribution, skills of the contributors (for example the ability to socially network with each other), the contribution of the teacher and/or the instructor, the type of group itself among other things. Group work can either be helpful or destructive based on the final results. While team learning skills in school require being natural for future use, there is a need to make sure that the independence of students is not ignored in the group work. This can be achieved through personal evaluation for example administering individual examinations, oral tests and requiring that the individual students present answers for assigned questions.
The base group refers to a type of group organization that is long-term and staying throughout the course being learned or even longer. The group is aimed at helping individual members by personalizing the required work and course experiences. Members exchange information such as their phone numbers to contact one another for discussions, and the work is preserved in group folders.
Informal cooperative learning groups are for a short period of time, disorganized, and used to help a student focus his or her attention on the material being taught by the teacher or lecturer. In this type, the lecturer would emphasize the formation of groups during the lecture or learning period, after or before the learning period. In addition, they may be used to set right the learning conditions or environment, help the students to have a cognitive focus on the learning material, signify the end of a learning class or session, and prepare the learning material in advance.
Formal cooperate learning groups have the highest potential to cause change amongst students but are the most difficult to implement.
Although teamwork can improve learning and the quality of learning in the classroom, another type of learning can deteriorate the situation by causing disharmony, and dissatisfaction amongst the learners (Smith, 1995). Therefore it is necessary to be sure what group type is being implemented in the classroom. The following are the various types of groups that can be implemented in the learning environment;
Pseudo-Learning Groups
This is a situation where students do not want to work in groups although they are placed in them. In this case, students want to continue competing with their colleagues and view each other as competitors who must be defeated. Thus, as a result, they may hide information from one another, mislead, confuse or hinder one another in learning. Students may do this because they continue to feel that they will be ranked according to the individual’s contribution and not as a group. This type must be discouraged because students would even do better while alone (Smith, 1995).
Cooperative Learning Groups
The students are in this case provided with the complexity of the task and the goal of maximizing the learning for all members motivates them to achieve results that exceed their possible individual achievements. The individuals participate to achieve group results, and individual together with group accountability for high-quality results exists among the group members. The group is taught teamwork and building skills necessary for their success, work together face to face to achieve certain things and they are able to analyze the effectiveness of the group. Emphasis is laid on the need to continue improving quality of teamwork processes and quality of learning.
High-Performance Cooperative Learning Group
In this model, students demonstrate high level of commitment and achieve better results than the cooperative learning model. Emotional attachment, respect, and trust among the members may be evident in addition to a mutual concern for one another’s growth and support (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993). Most groups do not grow to this level (Smith, 1995).
It is important to note that better results are out of sacrifice or hard work to form a cooperative learning group that is structured well. A group theta is poorly structured will achieve poorer results. In order to achieve positive independence, students must understand that success or failure will result from cooperate work and each should demonstrate role interdependence through fulfilling the assigned responsibilities. In addition, the instructors must foster goal interdependence within the student groups through encouraging them to reaching an agreement on the strategies to be used for all problems and agree on the solution. The group should also foster face-to-face promotive interaction which encourages passing knowledge amongst the members through oral teaching and explanation on experience on solving problems, group strategies to achieve the ends, past and present learning and should discourage silent participation where students do not contribute or get involved (Smith, 1995). Although fostering cooperation is important, the instructor must let the students be individually responsible and accountable through accomplishing their part. Students need to be assessed for example through individual examination and individual presentation of an answer to a query, so that independence cannot be dissolved in the group work. Oral examinations also may be administered to access an individual student in group work. In order to achieve good results in team work, students need to be taught team work skills in a purposeful and precise manner in which academic skills are taught, which will enable them to accomplish academic goals. These skills include conflict management, decision-making, leadership, communication and building of trust amongst each other. Students should also be able to access and monitor their progress, identify helpful or unhelpful tasks, adjust or change what is necessary, and strategize on how best they can achieve results (Smith, 1995). The instructor or the teacher should realize that they need to perform an important role to achieve good results from group work and therefore act to: define and specify the objectives needed to be achieved for every lesson or work; make instructional decisions as to what method to employ to form a group, group duration, group membership and size, roles amongst members, among other tasks; evaluate performance of the group using a criteria-referenced approach (Smith, 1995); monitor the whole process and assists where needed; and perform his or her duties in passing on the necessary knowledge concepts and strategies, foster individual accountability, specify positive interdependence, define and explain the assignment, among other tasks to assists the students accomplish the required.
Identified flaws in the action research
The following problems would be expected in the research study;
- Inconsistency in linkages between data concerning individual student performance and group work performance and drawing the lines between the two
- Lack of clear method of measuring the individual contribution while in a group
Student surveys and teacher observations
This section will present the questionnaires and other additional materials to be used in the actual studies. The questionnaires reflect the number of participants in the study and feature the actual questions to be used in this study. In this case it will present the questionnaires to be formulated by the student and passed to the study participants. The number of participants will be 30 students. Other materials attached to this section will include materials that the teacher used to assess the students while in the group (sample) and any other material that the student collects during the actual study that is essential for evidence for the topic in question.
References and Bibliography
Johnson, David W., Johnson, Roger T., and Smith, Karl A. (1991). Active learning: Cooperation in the college classroom. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company
Johnson, David W., Johnson, Roger T., and Smith, Karl A. (1991). Cooperative learning: Increasing college faculty instructional productivity. ASHE-ERIC Report on Higher Education. Washington, DC: The George Washington University
Johnson, David W., Johnson, Roger T. (1989). Cooperation and competition: Theory and research. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company
Katzenbach, Jon R. and Smith, Douglas K. (1993). The discipline of teams. Harvard Business Review, 71(2), 111-120
Katzenbach, Jon R. & Smith, Douglas K. (1993). The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance organization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press
McKeachie, Wilbert; Pintrich, Paul; Yi-Guang, Lin; and Smith, David. 1986. Teaching and learning in the college classroom: A review of the research literature. Ann Arbor, MI: The Regents of the University of Michigan
Smith, Karl A., and Starfield, Anthony M. 1993. Building models to solve problems. In J.H. Clarke & A.W. Biddle, (Eds.). Teaching critical thinking: Reports from across the curriculum. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall
Smith Karl. CooperativeLearning: Effective Teamwork for Engineering Classrooms. 1995. IEEE Education Society/ASEE Electrical Engineering Division Newsletter. Web.
Starfield, Anthony M., Smith, Karl A., and Bleloch, Andrew L. 1994. How to model it: Problem solving for the computer age. Edina, MN: Burgess International Group, Inc
Tinto, Vincent. 1994. Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition. Second Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Treisman, U. 1992. Studying students studying calculus: A look at the lives of minority mathematics students in college. College Mathematics Journal. 23(5), 362-372.
Tribus, Myron. (1992). Total quality management in schools of business and engineering. In Harry V. Roberts (Ed.) Academic initiatives in total quality for higher education. Milwaukee, WI: ASQC Quality Press
Woods, Donald R. (1994). Problem-based learning: How to gain the most from PBL. Waterdown, Ontario: Donald R. Woods.