4.1: Preparing for Group Projects
4.2: Collaborating Effectively
4.3: Disagreeing Respectively
4.4: Brainstorming and Idea Building
4.5: Agreeing on Group Responsibilities
4.6: Negotiating Within Groups
4.7: Practicing Group Work
4.8: Reflecting on Lessons Learned
4.9: Presenting a Service Project Plan (PBL)
4.10: Mod. 4 Reflection & Assessment
*All modules are 10 lessons plus boosters leading to a culminating project & assessment.
Working cooperatively and in collaboration with co-workers and colleagues are highly prized skills in the workplace. Consequently, schools often provide opportunities for students to work together in teams on group projects. As the first lesson shows, students have varied evaluations of the effectiveness of these group experiences, often preferring to either work alone, and thus have greater control over the final product, or work with students who will share the burden and provide leadership (or even carry the workload). Clearly, students need skills necessary to effectively work in groups or teams.
Module 4 introduces the “forming—storming—norming—performing” model of group development, first proposed by Bruce Tuckman (1965) and widely used in workplace settings ever since (Bonebright, 2010). Tuckman viewed these stages as necessary for teams to plan their work, find solutions to problems, and deliver results—and for team members to grow personally and professionally.
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To move to the next phase—“storming”—team members must be open to recognizing and addressing the challenges and conflicts they encounter. Teams can get stuck in this phase when they don’t a) recognize it as a necessary developmental challenge and b) possess the skills necessary to meet the challenge. In Lesson 4.2, students identify challenges they have encountered or might encounter in working on group projects. In Lesson 4.3, they continue to explore and apply: thinking and exploration strategies (i.e., being curious and finding out about someone’s point of view that is different from their own), self-management strategies for calming down (e.g., breathing deeply or taking a break when they begin feeling angry during a disagreement)., and guidelines for disagreeing respectfully. The latter includes choosing respectful words and tone of voice, and non-threatening body language; addressing the issue without attacking the person; using active listening to understand others’ perspectives; managing one’s own emotions; and proposing a compromise, if necessary.
In the “norming” phase, team members take shared responsibility for the team’s goals and work collaboratively rather than competitively. Lesson 4.4 focuses on the widespread practice of brainstorming to spark group creativity and idea building. Brainstorming involves generating many ideas or solutions in a short amount of time, abstaining from criticism during the exercise, and refining and possibly merging these ideas/solutions.
While there are many pluses to the brainstorming approach, especially in small groups, there are also potential cons. These include social loafing or free riding (making less of an effort than when working alone), social anxiety (being fearful of the reception of one’s ideas by the group), regression towards the norm (more talented group members end up matching the ideas of less talented members) and production blocking (allowing individuals to express just a single idea in large groups), (Chamorro-Premuzic, 2015; Mullen, et al., 1991). School-Connect strategies covered in Lessons 4.2-4.4 serve to head off and ameliorate these potential effects by addressing them proactively.
Lesson 4.5 addresses another aspect of the norming process: agreeing on group responsibilities. This includes creating guidelines for working together, assigning responsibilities to capitalize on the strengths of team members, making a work plan and schedule to complete the project, and planning workarounds for events and potential challenges that could affect project completion.
In the final phase of group development—“performing”—teams reap the benefits of working within established norms and roles. Team members become more motivated to work towards their common goals and have the tools to deal with problems when they arise. Lessons 4.7 focuses on negotiating agreements between or among team members and achieving “win-win” solutions. Lesson 4.8. provides practice in applying the basic skills learned thus far within a fun, simulated work project. And Lesson 4.9 provides practice in all phases of group development as student teams work to create, implement, and present a meaningful service project of their choice.
Finally, Lesson 4.10 provides students an opportunity to reflect on what they learned about working in teams and take an assessment of student learning pertaining to content and skills covered in the module.
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