Newsletter December 2023: TAL2023 - Group work in teaching

1. Group work must be facilitated

The main message in Ib Ravn's keynote – and research – is that group work must be facilitated. There are great gains to be made for learning, task solving and well-being by training study groups and work groups to always choose a facilitator among the group members to manage the work process in the group.

A facilitator is a group member who participates in the group work in line with the rest of the group, but who has received a mandate from the rest of the group to take on special responsibility for the group's work process. The facilitator is responsible for the process, but not for the content, as the facilitator has no expert role. The facilitator structures each meeting and acts as meeting leader with the task of keeping the focus on the topic. The facilitator has the mandate, for example, to interrupt the conversations if they steer away from the topic. It is also the facilitator's task to ensure that everyone contributes to the conversation, e.g., by using break-out rooms and other facilitating techniques. Finally, it is the facilitator's task to delegate work tasks and follow up on the progress of the task solution at the following meeting.

The facilitator role can alternate among the members of the group, and the various educational programs can benefit from investing some (few) resources - at the start of studies or during the first semester – in training its students to be able to take on the role as facilitator at intervals.

In the Danish education system, group work is generally - and for good reasons (see below) - highly valued, but our Danish egalitarian culture both creates - and blinds us to - a number of challenges in group work. The facilitator role must, among other things, (i) discourage an intimacy culture, where the main focus becomes 'having fun', 'having a good time' and 'making friends'; (ii) counteract an excessive democratic culture where 'everyone should have equal speaking time' and where 'all contributions are of equal value'; (iii) countering the 'evil dictator' where a self-appointed leader takes over; and (iv) prevent some group members from being marginalized and possibly stigmatized ('the lazy dog') and 'free rider' problems, where group members do not really contribute to the group's work.

The students may have a strong interest in facilitation. Some students have built up a certain aversion to group work precisely because group work can easily go off track. Group work cannot ‘take care of itself’, and there are very good reasons to 'professionalise' group work in higher education.

Teachers may also have a strong interest in facilitation: Facilitation is a strong card in teaching, but it is also a strong card for the teachers in their work in their own research groups and professional groups as well as in the role of meeting leader.

See Tools for facilitating groups, where there are (i) some very practical tools for facilitating meetings, - including Ib Ravn's instructions for facilitated group work used at the TAL conference, ready to copy for the next teaching session or next meeting in the colleague group. In addition, there is also (ii) an article on the effect of facilitating a group of students in relation to student wellbeing. 

2. Group work has many faces

The many conference contributions showed that groups and group work in an educational context are many different things. There is enormous variation both in the individual programs and between the programs.

Groups are established with completely different time perspectives in mind – from 3 years to three minutes: Reading groups are formed with the aim of being the academic and social basis in all courses throughout a three-year bachelor's programme; working groups for one or more courses in one semester; exam preparation groups; project and assignment groups for part of a semester; work groups for a single lesson; small groups for a few minutes in a single lecture, - to name just a few formats.

The purpose and content of the group work also varies enormously: The content may be to carry out a large semester-long project for an external requester (firm or organisation) or to fulfil exam requirements; to produce assignments; to produce written and/or oral presentations; produce laboratory results; to produce (peer) feedback on assignments; to discuss texts, questions, and dilemmas; etc.

The groups may have come about in a variety of ways, which also reflect different considerations of how much the groups should cover professional needs and how much they (also) should cover social needs.

And the groups are linked to the most diverse teaching formats – on-line, blended, flipped, f2f – and teaching forms such as lectures, problem-based learning, project teaching, case teaching, laboratory teaching, etc.

But one can perhaps, and across all differences, draw some common conclusions regarding group work:

1. There must be some coordination at programme level of which types of groups the programme should mainly rely on. The groups must support the teaching, and the teaching must support the groups. And it can become both confusing and a logistical nightmare for the students if all lecturers/courses decide for themselves in terms of group formats.

2. All group work requires systematicity and careful (written) instruction regarding task, purpose, product, duration, preparation to function well. "You can just reflect on this in groups" is no-go as an instruction.

3. All group work will benefit if the group members have facilitator skills, and a group member should always be given the mandate as facilitator.

4. Students have mixed experiences with group work and group work is not necessarily popular. One can easily find among student evaluations statements such as the group work was "full of problems", "the worst", "sad and killing the joy". As mentioned above: Group work cannot take care of itself. It requires a friendly editing hand, and training.

5. Perhaps you often don't have to talk about 'group work' in class at all, but just give the instructions

See The thinking classroom by Henrik Skov Midtiby for an example of activating group work with a clear rationale, carried out in a classroom with 90 participants.

3. Group work can be difficult but is indispensable

In the Danish education system groups are given great importance. But why exactly? Why is teaching and learning not 'just' a matter between the teacher and the individual student? Why should peers/fellow students be mixed into the equation? Here are some answers that were richly illustrated at the TAL conference through the many presentations (and which are also illustrated in The learning classroom mentioned above):

Learning. Well-planned teaching involves the students in each case in six different learning processes: (i) acquiring new material and concepts by listening and reading and (ii) investigating new topics and concepts by exploring, comparing and criticizing in relation to already acquired knowledge; (iii) produce notes, summaries and models in your own words for your own use and (iv) practice with the new material by doing exercises, calculating tasks and getting feedback. Finally (v) discuss and thus articulate own ideas and questions and challenge and respond to others' ideas and (counter)questions and finally (vi) collaborate with others to produce new knowledge by discussing, practicing, and producing. The point here is that the individual student has to do the first two processes on their own, can manage the next two processes themselves under the expert guidance of a teacher (even though it probable would be funnier together with peers). But the last two processes, which are crucial for deep learning, require the involvement of fellow students. So, collaboration with peers - working in groups - and active learning promote each other.

Cooperation with fellow students is also decisive for the amount of feedback the students receive during their programme. The students get far more feedback from peers through informal and formal professional discussions and collaborations than they receive from lecturers. And it is through practical collaboration in work groups that the students learn, yes, collaboration as an independent competence.

Finally, confidence in one's own ability/self-efficacy and a sense of belonging is built up to a decisive degree in the company and cooperation with - and the mirroring in - fellow students, all of which is of great importance in producing the persistence required to complete the programme.

So, everyone involved – students, lecturers, directors of study, administration – has a very great interest in the students experiencing well-functioning study groups and in general having a well-functioning social and academic infrastructure during and between classes.

Study groups can be difficult, but they are absolutely indispensable.

Literature:

About facilitation:

• Ravn, I. (2023). Den faciliterende underviser (1. udgave ed.). Hans Reitzel.
• Rask, L., Hansen, M. B., Ravn, I., & Rask, A. K. (2018). Studiegrupper: Samarbejde og facilitering. (1. ed.) Hans Reitzels Forlag.

About course design and learning:

• Laurillard, D. (2009). The pedagogical challenges to collaborative technologies. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 4(1), 5-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-008-9056-2.

About feedback:

• Jensen, L. X., Bearman, M., & Boud, D. (2023). Feedback encounters: Towards a framework for analysing and understanding feedback processes. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 48(1), 121-134. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2022.2059446

About student retention:

• Tinto, V. (2017). Through the eyes of students. Journal of College Student Retention : Research, Theory & Practice, 19(3), 254-269. https://doi.org/10.1177/1521025115621917.