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These materials examine the importance of group work. During your degree course (and the pre-sessional course) you will undertake group work. In addition, employers are looking to recruit those who can demonstrate the ability to work with others, so it is important to experience working as part of a team and the challenges it brings.

There are a lot of materials for you to look at but your main focus for the next week should be to watch the videos on Group Work. The additional reading texts will provide you with additional information. However you are NOT expected to read them all for the seminar next week.

The aims of this unit are:

To introduce the main aspects of group work in an academic context

Examine some of the issues which may occur when working in groups

To develop skills which will facilitate successful group participatio

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1. Group Work - University of Leeds Skills@Library

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1. Group Work - University of Leeds Skills@Library

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If you have had little experience of working in groups, take a look at the ‘Making group-work work’ on the University of Leeds Skills at Library  website and the Aim Higher  video resources. They won't provide you with all the answers but they show you some of the challenges you might face.

https://library.leeds.ac.uk/skills-group-work

Using the  'Aim Higher' video links below with use the worksheet and vocabulary glossary provided to guide your listening of the different episodes:

http://archive.learnhigher.ac.uk/groupwork/episodes.php

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Skills and techniques to improve group work at university

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Worksheet Group Work University of Leeds Skills@Library

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Worksheet Group Work University of Leeds Skills@Library

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When watching the videos make notes and answer questions using the worksheet.

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2. Benefits of Group Work - Does working in a group actually help us learn?

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2. Benefits of Group Work - Does working in a group actually help us learn?

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The article link below looks at some of the reasons & benefits of group work.
Read the article and make notes using the discussion questions.

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If you're at university, you'll almost certainly be made to work with your fellow students to complete a group assignment at some point during your course.

Some people get really enthusiastic about group assignments, while others view them with suspicion and dread. Usually what they fear most is the prospect of working with someone who's hugely enthusiastic about group assignments.

But does collaboration benefit our learning? Or is a camel just a horse designed by committee? In other words, is group work actually less efficient and productive than an individual performing a task alone?

As is almost always the case when humans are involved, the truth varies. Assuming there are no particularly irksome or troublemaking individuals upsetting the group harmony, there are some ways working in groups can be helpful when it comes to learning, and other ways in which it may be more of an obstacle. So, here are the pros and cons of teamwork.

Motivation

Humans are, by nature, incredibly social creatures. At a neurological level, we see ourselves as part of a group and worry about the judgment of others. The underlying drive to be part of a group, to be recognised and appreciated by its members, and to achieve high status among them can be a serious motivator when it comes to completing a task.

Performance

Some studies suggest that group assignments do indeed directly improve an individual's ability to learn and perform. "Socially shared cognition" and "transactive memory" are some of the loftier terms used to describe groups working together on an intellectual task. It makes sense that information discussed and delivered by friends and colleagues will be more salient than the same information delivered in a dull lecture while you're struggling to stay awake.

Individual performance can improve if each person is allowed to focus on what they're good at

Division of labour

The idea may be fashionable, particularly in higher education, but there is no decent evidence to support the existence of "learning styles". However, people do excel at different things, whether due to affinity, aptitude, motivation or some other reason.

In group tasks, individual performance can improve if each person is allowed to focus on what they're good at (such as presentation, analysis, research, and so on). Interacting with others who know a specific area better than you can enhance your own grasp of it, if only because they can articulate it in a way that hadn't occurred to you before.

New friends

When supervisors assign group tasks, they usually allocate the groups themselves, rather than leave this up to the students. This means you meet and work with new people in group assignments. For both introverts and extroverts, this can be a plus. Extroverts are likely to enjoy this anyway, while otherwise-reluctant introverts may benefit from this obligation to interact.

As well as learning new skills and knowledge, group assignments could help you make new friends. This is a pleasant experience, and basic associative learning means we are better able to learn things that are paired with a pleasant experiences. On a more complex, "human" level, things we're emotionally engaged with tend to be more stimulating and thus easier to learn and recall.

Group polarisation

There are some very clear drawbacks to group learning, however. And one of them is that the conclusions arrived at by groups can be a lot less cautious than those reached by people working alone.

If you don't feel your contribution is noticed, why bother putting in the effort?

Countless studies have shown the effect of group polarisation, where group decisions tend to be more extreme than individual ones. The subconscious desire for group harmony, together with one-upmanship, can lead to more out-there conclusions than each person would agree to alone.

In group assignments, this can lead to wrong conclusions, which means everyone's marks suffer.

Social loafing

Even if you think you're a conscientious, hardworking type, you may still be prone to social loafing, the tendency for people to put in less effort when working on a task with a group than they would do if alone.

If you don't feel your contribution is noticed, why bother putting in the effort? The feeling that others will pick up the slack can limit your own performance.

Informational influence

While working in groups may improve your understanding and knowledge, there's no guarantee that this knowledge will be correct. Informational social influence is where the groups we're part of impact on what we know - but this could easily be wrong.

If everyone tells you peanuts are nuts and not legumes, you're going to start questioning your own knowledge. If enough people in a group assignment arrive at a wrong conclusion, it could overwhelm your own correct one, which wouldn't happen in an individual assignment.

The trivial matters

Have you ever been in a group where a ridiculous amount of time is spent on minor matters? Whose turn it is to supply the biscuits, what colour the background of the slides should be, and so on? This has been labelled Parkinson's law of triviality, where groups spend far more time on easy-but-unimportant tasks than they do on important-but-complex ones.

The latter are challenging and daunting, and it's harder to show authority or expertise (or even form an opinion) when discussing them. Hence it's annoyingly common to spend hours debating something inconsequential, while the point of the assignment isn't dealt with.

These are just some of the ways in which group assignments can impact on how we learn things, for better or worse. Obviously, it varies tremendously within different contexts, while modern developments, particularly technological ones, are changing things - hopefully for the better. (For example, social loafing is much harder to do in assignments based in online documents, where everyone's individual contribution is tracked and monitored).

So, while it's hard to say with certainty whether a specific group assignment will improve or hinder your learning, they probably are still worth doing. It's rare to encounter an employer or institute that doesn't emphasise "teamwork skills" these days, and in our increasingly interconnected society, learning how to be part of a group is something worth working on, regardless of the task itself.
Dean Burnett discusses how groups affect our thinking and more, in his book The Idiot Brain (Guardian Faber, £12.99). To order a copy for £7.99, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99. Get involved with the Use your head series by joining the discussion on #useyourhead or pitching your ideas to natalie.gil.casual@theguardian.com Topics

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Does working as a group actually help us learn?

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If you're at university, you'll almost certainly be made to work with your fellow students to complete a group assignment at some point during your course. Some people get really enthusiastic about group assignments, while others view them with suspicion and dread.

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Group Work Seminar  - Discussion Questions

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Group Work Seminar  - Discussion Questions

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In preparation for your Group Work seminar, you need to read the discussion questions.

Use the questions in the attached word document to help guide your notes when listening and reading the materials in the Padlet. Remember to make notes and answer the questions. You may have other questions you want to ask or discuss in the seminar, make a note of these on the worksheet. Remember to bring your answers and questions with you to the seminar on Group Work

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The attached document is a: 'Group work Checklist: What to do on your first meeting' which will be helpful when your group meets for the first time

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The attached document looks at what is required for students undertaking group work at university

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The attached document provides a brief overview of working in groups. It also examines the advantages of group work, what makes an effective group, the skills required for effective group work and the key stages of group work

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This document was written to accompany the videos. It is quite long and detailed but it may be useful to read when you have time