For those of us who teach in design fields the idea of students working in groups should not come as a revelation. My faculty and I have been employing Group projects for over a decade; I have been teaching since ’97 and utilizing group work for pretty much that length of time. For that entire time I have also heard the unified groan that comes from students when they hear that they will be working in groups, and the inevitable pushback from some students for a variety of reasons. Group projects (and learning) is valuable in a number of ways but in many ways it requires identifying motivators to be effective, especially since many students bring enter into these projects with previous often negative experiences.
I have had students fresh from high school who have had negative experiences with group members who skate by on the efforts of others, or students who thrive in group projects by taking on familiar roles that do not challenge or develop them; for any instructor it is important to establish how to address these and other challenges in group learning. Ignoring that most students are motivated by individual achievement can cause hazards and limit the effectiveness of group learning. In many ways the terminology presents a challenge, using the term of “group†is common and often generic, and while it establishes a basic dynamic that promotes everyone participating, it limits the students ability to organize into a working structure. I have made a change in semantics to promote a more workable dynamic using the term “team†project.
I have used this with senior level students primarily where competition between teams and development of leadership skills is essential before graduation. I have done this to push students and help them develop a wider array of skills within traditional group dynamics, and assist them in developing individual skills and methods of self-assessment. In a world where reality TV is standard, students understand that a team dynamic can be the determining factor in success. They can understand roles, and they can utilize the feedback when competing. In a recent class, I utilized weekly challenges, as a means of providing feedback on homework assignments, and the teams used this competition as a motivator for personal and team goals.
While this seems to be a semantic change, the idea of utilizing teams is actually an evolution of the group project many of our current students have experienced. We need to adapt the concept of group learning to eliminate the negative connotations that students begin learning as early as grade school.
