Reflecting on the Benefits of Groups, Projects, and Presentations

http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=1795

One of the first things expressed in the above video was that by requiring students to engage with one other, group work provides students with a new way of connecting to the material. Being able to complete a project alone is a good skill for all students to have, but successful group work reinforces cooperating, problem solving, and decision making, which are skills that students can’t learn alone. Group work is especially important for young students because it helps build their social skills at an early age: It encourages students to learn together and, in a way, forces them to get along with their peers while contributing new ideas and helping each other attain a common goal. In groups, kids can come up with better ideas by using combined brain power, and they can help each other understand the content better.  Knowing how to communicate effectively, cooperate, and socialize in a productive way are some of the most important parts of succeeding in the real world, and practicing those things is useful for students of all ages.

By participating in group work, students not only learn to work together; they also learn the course content in ways that are personal and memorable. Each learning experience is meaningful because the students must actively talk and participate. In the video, one teacher pointed out that it is common for many groups to have “hitchhikers,” who just coast along on the current of everyone else’s work, which is a good counterargument for the above statements. In high school, I remember being frustrated when some students would not contribute in a group setting because I felt it was unfair to everyone who was working hard. However, if a teacher holds every student accountable for his or her work and grades individually rather than merely grading the group as a whole, everyone will participate and the group work will foster meaningful learning. One of the best ways to prevent “hitchhiking” in a group is to assign a specific job to each student. That way, there will be clear expectations for each group member and the students will see what it is like to complete a project when everyone has a job. This goes hand in hand with the importance of the way a teacher structures a group. When teachers assign students to groups and give them individual jobs, the teachers are taking each student’s strengths and weaknesses into account and helping them succeed by putting them in groups that will work together. Teachers generally know who the natural leaders of each class are, and which students have social needs. They also know which students have disabilities, and they assign groups that they know will be equally spaced for everyone. When groups are structured badly, it can slow a group down, but a group moves efficiently when kids with a variety of different skills are mixed together.

Another huge part of working in a group is being able to present completed work to the class. Presentations are an extremely good way to build public speaking skills and for students to practice equally dividing group responsibilities. Presentations can be oral, visual, or both, but either way they allow students to show off what they have been working on together. It also provides teachers with an easy way of assessing student learning. After each presentation is over, the teacher can ask questions that pertain to the presentations so that each group can prove how much they have learned. When a teacher asks questions, it allows him or her to see whether the students truly have a clear understanding of what they are talking about. Providing feedback to the group also helps students work more efficiently in the future and know how to improve their finished product.  These are just a couple examples of how group work is beneficial for teachers and students as a whole.