Serendipity35

My wife told me recently that in her next life we wants to come back as the person in the group who does none of the work and gets the same grade as the people who did all the work. She was in a bad move that day. But she is not alone is not liking group work. I had that same attitude when it came to being a student in a group. 

Still, we keep seeing reports that employers value collaboration along with the ability to apply learning in real-world settings. Employers like critical thinkers and the emphasis on applied learning experiences. 

A survey of employers done by aacu.org found that 88% think that it is important for colleges and universities to ensure that all students are prepared with the skills and knowledge needed to complete an applied learning project. Large majorities say they are more likely to consider a job candidate who has participated in an internship, a senior project, a collaborative research project, a field-based project in a diverse community setting with people from different backgrounds, or a community-based project.

Group work. And most instructors see benefits to group work, such as exposing them to multiple perspectives that mirror "real-world" jobs. 

But not all the research is positive. I was reading recently that some recent research shows that if groups and assignments are structured hastily, they can be counterproductive.

One interesting finding was that "students in underrepresented groups, like women in engineering, might experience marginalization when working in teams."

The feeling that my wife had the other day and that I had as a student is described as the "lone-wolf phenomenon." It is when a student goes off and does the group’s assignment alone, while the other students learn little. I have seen groups with several lone wolves. It is because many of us like to work on our own and want to be responsible for our own grades.

If the job market demands you be a good team member, how do we train students for that demand?

Data from the National Survey of Student Engagement indicates that most students worked with others on assigned projects in the past academic year, but that the amount varies by discipline. Engineering students were at the top.

Students tend to work on what they’re already good at, but teachers should create teams and assign roles to challenge students to expand their skills and strengthen weaker areas.

This doesn't mean that all students (and perhaps more so in math or the humanities) shouldn't be required to do solitary tasks like research and writing and solo problem-solving.

Generally, I am annoyed by business models that move into educational pedagogy, but this past week, while I was thinking about group work, I came upon the term "holacracy." It is defined as "a new way of running an organization that removes power from a management hierarchy and distributes it across clear roles, which can then be executed autonomously, without a micromanaging boss."

Holacracy has rules and processes for how a team breaks up its work, and defines its roles with clear responsibilities and expectations. 

Of course, holacracy is also a book: Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World. 

Holacracy distributes authority and decision-making throughout an organization, and defines people not by hierarchy and titles, but by roles.

Two of the champions of  holacracy are Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com and Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger, Twitter, and Medium.