Importance Of Group Work At Different Levels In The Education System

Benefits and Challenges

Discuss about the Importance of Group Work at the different levels in the Education System.

The group work is considered to be important for the learning at the different levels in the education system. There are different scientific approaches for the students to learn and work in the group. As per the research, it has been seen that the groups will help the students with the ability to learn, where the aim is also to understand the current level of knowledge and how the people are able to share their thoughts about a particular topic when it is being discussed in a group. (Burke, 2011). The primary aim for the university students is to give a voice by elucidating the university students to put up their positive and the negative thoughts, while working in the group. The paper is designed to focus on how the students are able to work with the collaborative learning and the other educational activities and to interact with the faculty members for better grades and becoming satisfied with their education.

Some of the advantages while working in the group are:

1. The groups have the information which is comparatively more than the single person. Here, there are greater resources and information which is available for the variety of backgrounds and the experiences.
2. The group works on the simulation of creativity with regards to the problem solving and handling the applied heads. (Burnett, 2016).
3. The people in the group are able to remember the discussion easily as the output for any discussion comes after many acquisitions and allegations in the group. Hence, the major focus is to present all the instructional formats.
4. The decisions that the students help will bring a better satisfaction as per the research where they are indulged in the group problem solving activity. Here, the members are also more committed to the solutions and are satisfied with the participation in the group than those who are not involved in the same.
5. The students have a comparatively better understanding of where they stand and also with each activity there comes a thought to read more about a topic so that it can further be discussed in the group among the members. (Chiriac, 2014).
6. The team work is highly valued by the students as well as the employees where there is a development of the interpersonal skills with the all-round development that is listed by the different employers. The university works on how the graduates are able to evaluate and work towards the best solution.

Some of the challenges which could be identified are group dissonance where some of the members of the group does not will to work together where some of the groups also lack motivation, and the strong leadership. There are some of the personality conflicts which leads to the failure and avoiding the breaking up of the group. Hence, to overcome this, there is a need to focus on certain skill sets with the help of easy communication without any fear. It is necessary in the group to work with disagreements and then find the resolution for the same. The other challenge is to evaluate the group where the aspects of the process need to check on the effectiveness with the group member’s contribution as a whole. The identification of the aspects and the assessment is mainly to evaluate the effective methods which are important for the future group projects. For the students, the coordination costs are there where there is a need to allocate some time and energy to the group with properly scheduling the meetings and then matching the time to meet and correspond. The coordination and the motivation leads to missing the deadlines. Hence, it is important to keep the groups small and assign the roles to the different members so that everyone is active enough to complete the task. (Davies, 2009). The active build-up communication and the conflict resolution skills help in designating the time in the project schedule with the group members who try to integrate the different parts. The social loafing also includes how the group members exert less effort with the reduced sense of accountability. The conflict is within the group that erode any of the morale and cause the members to withdraw as well. For this, there is a need to properly assess the group process with the self-evaluations and the other peer evaluations. The intellectual costs are depending upon the demands with reduced creativity and the productivity. The group thinking leads to the conforming of a perceived majority view with the escalation of commitment to become committed to the planning strategy. The common information effect is set to focus on the information of the members with the unique patterns which are found to be relevant. For the allocators or the teachers, the teaching process skills with the functioning in an effective way is difficult for the strong communication, coordination and handling the conflict resolution skills. Hence, for this, the assessment of the teamwork skills should be done in a pre-planned manner. (Mellor et al., 2016).

It is important for the management to focus on the potential capacity of the human resources with the high degree of the group loyalty with the effectiveness of the skills of interaction, and the high-performance goals. To build the effective team, the management need to provide with the better environment which is found to be conducive for the team work with the attitude that includes a better support with team efforts and innovation. (Burke, 2011). Hence, some of the factors that affect the success of the group work are:

1. There are some people in the group who become dormant due to their lack of knowledge. They become silent listeners without any ability to communicate with the other team members. Hence, this pressure should be evaluated and every person in the group should be given a chance to speak about his thoughts.
2. The individual might dominate the decision of the other person which directly leads to the members to not gain satisfaction from the groups as they are alienated from the decision-making processes.
3. There are some members who also rely on others for the work. Hence, with this, there are some of the salient problems which need to face the groups. Some members do not pitch in and help rather they try to threaten the other person. For this, the best solution could be to tell the group about the aim and objective of the group discussion and how it will be evaluated based on the thoughts. This would lead to the responsibilities for every member in the group.
4. In the group, it is certain that more time is taken for the discussion, where there is a possibility to never-ending thoughts. Hence, sometimes, the discussion could be eradicated rather the individual thoughts could be considered. (Chiriac, 2014).
5. The factors like leadership and cohesive nature is considered as a major drawback in the group. Some of the formal groups need to focus on how the managers or the supervisors are working as the leaders. The informal groups are selected by consensus where the groups of leadership are influential on the higher quality of the group. The high degree and strength of interpersonal attraction comes among the members where there is a high motivation to achieve the goals of the group. The cohesiveness is based on the loyalty where the compliance is with the group norms, friendliness and the role responsibility for the group efforts and willingness to defend against any undesirable interference.

Conclusion

The information about the group work is to focus on the collaborative learning, where the students spend the time to meet in groups and are also able to achieve a deep understanding about the learning of the themes. The development of the skills and the writing with communication helps to encourage the students to spend more time with the easy conversations to the team members. (Davies, 2009). With recent trend development, the collaborative learning process is based on using the technology with utilizing the use of the wikis that encourage the participation and group involvement. There are many instructors who make use of the online discussions for face to face classes to foster the participation and engagement. The group work is considered to be greater than the sum of its part, where there is a creation, monitoring and the evaluation of the groups. The process is to supplement the lectures that will help the students to be engaged in the work and develop teamwork skills as well.

References

Burke, A., 2011. Group Work: How to Use Groups Effectively. Journal of Effective Teaching, 11(2), pp.87-95.

Burnett, D. 2016. Does working as a group actually help us learn?. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/apr/09/does-working-as-a-group-actually-help-us-learn [Accessed 20 Aug. 2017].

Chiriac, E.H., 2014. Group work as an incentive for learning–students’ experiences of group work. Frontiers in psychology, 5.

Davies, W.M., 2009. Groupwork as a form of assessment: common problems and recommended solutions. Higher Education, 58(4), pp.563-584.

Mellor A., LaBeouf J., and Rienties B. (2016). ‘Group Work in Academic Settings: An examination of key literature’ Journal of Studies in University Education 17 (4) 332-353