Group-work and collaborative learning activities are becoming a common part of most higher education classrooms. Group-work activities helps develop important collaborative, communication, negotiation and many other skills that are now starting to be recognised as essential for global workplaces and skills that future ready workforce should have. Unfortunately, some group-work activities are purely a reaction to the increasing numbers of students, rather than aiming to develop these skills. It’s no surprise than that most people involved in group-work activities don’t like it: educators find it hard to manage groups and students would rather do their own work than having to work with non-conforming students. In many cases international student tend to be at the receiving end of many of the criticisms around group-work: “the international students don’t do any work”, “the international students have bad English, so I have to do all the work”, “I am happy to do all the work myself” … etc. etc. In my own experience, the international students often are eager to engage in group-work, particularly with domestic students as it gives them an opportunity to “make friends” and “improve their English”. This is not surprising given the vast majority of International students we get in Australia are from collectivist cultural backgrounds. So what can we do to maximise the benefits of group-work activities? It is important to design group-work activities properly: As mentioned earlier on, many educators use group-work activities purely to address workload issues. This, I believe, will lead to problems. Group-work activities need to reflect the skills that you want your students do. In many cases this should also include reviewing the learning outcomes to see where the group-work activities fit. This will also help align the group-work activities to group-work assessments. One of the most important aspect of group-work activities is that it must be complex enough to require a number of people to solve it: ‘if a group-work activity can be done by one person, than it will be done by one person’. Train students to work in groups: We often expect students to engage in group-work activities, without giving them appropriate training. If you are going to use group-work in your class, it is important to develop that right from the beginning. I have had students from many different countries in my classes, one of the first things I do is get them to get in groups with student from their own countries or speak the same language. Give them a simple problem which they discuss and share among themselves, and then with you. In subsequent classes you can make the problems more complex and move students around out of their original groups. Activities can also involve developing group-work project plans, and understanding what it means, developing responsible expectations for group-work activities. Design teams based on strengths: All students have something to offer. If you have been working with students on various group-work activities over a period of time, you should have a general idea about their strengths and weaknesses. Work with that. Try to form groups with different strengths and diverse skill set. Assess the process of working in groups: often we focus too much on the final outcome of a group activity, like the final report, presentation, etc. In order for group-work activities to work well, you need to demonstrate that students work like how they communicate, negotiate, problem solving, keeping on task, call out when someone is not on task, etc. should be rewarded in terms of marks. You need to give time in-class to monitor this work, provide feedback, and set expectations….make sure your group-work succeeds. You will be able to look at examples of some of these in some of the publications I have done previously: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/128328/1/AnandP-IADIS%202010.pdf https://eprints.qut.edu.au/128314/2/128314.pdf https://eprints.qut.edu.au/128327/1/LanceleyAnand-ISANA%202011.pdf https://eprints.qut.edu.au/128326/1/Anand_ICERI2012.pdf
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December 2019
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