Misunderstood Activity
I teach science based courses that require students to work well in groups in order to complete tasks and deadlines for projects in the course. The students are put into groups at the beginning of the course and they have time to chat to one another online but since we have had two semesters online because of the pandemic and this does inhibit some ability for the students to become real close both figuratively and literally. I constantly see that students do one part of the whole project and pass it on to the other group members and they don’t all work together collectively very well. This misconception on the part of the students maybe just needs to be practiced more and we often assume they know what how to carry out good group work.
An analogy to teach it well and make sense of it would be modeling and more scaffolding with the students. The students just need to see how some groups communicate and share ideas and how their learning outcomes are met and deadlines too. Of course, it’s done much better in the classroom but Google Meet groups can be equally productive one students add their comments and I find one strong student with excellent leadership qualities is key too. I’ve used some video of healthy groups working together and checklists work as well.
Tweet
Leave a Reply