Disadvantages of Group Working

· Individual students will have less control over the overall task than if they were completing it alone.

· There is always a risk of group members who are overly dominant, who contribute too little, who fail to participate effectively.

· Individual students, especially high-achievers, often feel that they could have attained a higher mark had they worked alone.

· If only a group mark is used in group assignments there can be resentment if all members did not contribute equally.

· Students sometimes see group commitments such as meetings and agreeing deadlines, deliverables etc as an added burden on top of having to complete the task itself.

· "There are both advantages and disadvantages of group work. Many of these depend on your own personality, as well as those of the people you are working with. Some advantages include:- Several people working together will often be able to finish work more quickly because work is divided amongst a number of people, instead of being handled by one person alone.- Group work allows for more

· discussion and the opportunity to view issues from a variety of perspectives.- Group work is a part of life. Having the ability to work collaboratively will benefit you in the workplace.A few disadvantages of group work are:- There is the potential for personality clashes, which may hamper the ability to accomplish work in a timely and effective manner.- One person may take on more work than others.- If someone does not do their fair share, the entire group suffers. In the academic setting, this may mean a lower grade for the group, even if everyone else has done their part."

22. Should students with strong skills help weak students in group projects. Research suggests that this isn’t a great concern, and that both “strong” and “weak” students benefit from interacting in peer discussion. One study (Smith et al., Science, 2009) found that even when nobody in the group knew the right answer, they were able to put together the right answer through discussion. However, another study has suggested that the way credit is given for answering questions can impact whether the right answer spreads through class from the strong students to the weak students. In a class with “low stakes” grading (equal credit for any response, with questions counting 12.5% of overall grade), peer discussion was more balanced, with both students in a pair contributing equally to discussion and more likely to vote differently. In contrast, a class with “high stakes” grading (incorrect responses earning 1/3rd the credit earned by a correct response, questions counting 20% of total grade), students earning higher grades dominated peer discussion, and both students in a discussion pair more often voted the same. In a small study we did in a different course, we found the correlation between students’ clicker question answers and their course grade was surprisingly low, indicating that as students were first learning new material, there was little distinction between “weak” and “strong” students. No matter what the achievement level of the student is, encouraging them to articulate their thinking is beneficial.

23. Group learning as an effective way of studying. There are many advantages to studying in groups. Group members support, encourage and draw strength from each other. Studying with others may be more fun than studying alone. Groups have practical advantages too. They’ll hold you more accountable for your study efforts. You’re less likely to miss a group meeting than to tell yourself you’ll “study later.” You will gain practical experience in working within groups, a skill many employers value. Finally, study groups can provide a support system. College can be an overwhelmingly new environment, and a study group automatically provides contact with others who share at least one thing in common. Decades of research by educational psychologists has shown that when students work together in collaborative teams in classrooms, they learn material better than when they sit alone at their desks. But no one had extended those studies to study groups outside the classroom. In the first scholarly study of such study groups, Sawyer, along with a former undergraduate student, videotaped and analyzed a study group for an undergraduate psychology course at the university. The group consisted of four students who got together in advance of each exam to study their lecture notes. Sawyer mapped out each nuance of their conversations including pauses, breaths, interruptions, glances and each “uhm” and “yeah.” The time-consuming process unveiled many details and features of conversation that normally would go unnoticed.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-30