Dear Jim,
I would break your questions down into some subheadings that I have found to be important.
1.  How do you form groups?
The basic question here is whether you assign students yourself or allow the students to self select.  A number of people who I respect highly feel that it is important to match student characteristics and so insist that the only way is for the teacher to do the assignments.  I have never felt Godlike and so tend to allow them to selfselect.  This approach has the added benefit that when a group runs into trouble with someone who isn't doing the work, I don't have to be the one responsible.
How big should the group be?  I have worked with groups all the way from two to nine.  I will quickly point out that nine membered groups seemed the biggest that I ever got to work, and that was in a shortcourse I was teaching on cooperative learning.  They had extremely good personal skills and were all strongly committed to the topic.  In general chemisry, where many students were freshperson and lacked either personal skills, personal commitment, or both, I worked with groups of two.  BTW, groups of two are considered heresy by many who do cooperative learning, three being the theoretical minimum size.  I have no faith in theory; I use what seems to work..
 
2.  How do you keep the groups functional?
Accountability is the essential factor in cooperative work but you can't leave the students to solve all the problems on their own.  You are still the teacher and it is your responsibility to help the students learn how to work in groups.  Assuming that they will always find a way without any guidance leads to a lot of students who hate cooperative assignments.
You must have some systematic way to assess how well the group is doing.  This is fairly easy to do orally with classroom assignments (I did it in groups of over 100 students) but harder with longer assignments.  In my environmental classes, where the assignments (case studies) lasted an entire period, I continually walked around and listened to the group activity.  When a group was totally hung up, I would try to jump start them with a leading question.  Of course, it is necessary to judge carefully when help is needed.  Some grinding of the gears is OK, just don't let it last too long so they become frustrated.  Cooperative activities should be fun.  (If many students really hate what they are doing, you have failed!)
 
The hardest was to keep groups on track on major written projects.  I would periodically sit down with each group and assess how well they were progressing.  Because the number of these sessions is limited, it is easy to have things get out of hand without your knowing it.  I never did solve this to my satisfaction.  Perhaps in this electronic age it would be possible to have them work online so that you can better follow the group and individual progress.
 
3.  How did you assess the groups work? (and the individuals work)? 
There is a delicate balance here.  The students are not paid to solve personnel problems; you are.  But they still need practice in solving these problems to prepare them for the "real world."  In general chemistry with informal lecture pairs, I never felt a need to assign grades.  Having me ask a direct question that they couldn't answer made students uncomfortable enough so that they were eager to avoid that situation.  I was always careful to avoid chastizing them, but not knowing the answer was important despite that.  Larger groups tended to get into the problem and so a group grade seemed to work fairly well.  
 
Jointly written papers were the hardest.  I always had at least one group with someone who failed to conribute.  I told them to break their project up and have each person write on a defined subtopic.  I gave 85 % of the work to the individual reports and 15% for the extent to which the group demonstrated interaction.  I refused to tell them how I wanted them  to "demonstrate interaction" but rather suggested a number of possibilities.  A few wrote the entire project jointly (very hard for college students), some cross-referenced to each others chapters, yet others jointly wrote a summary that integrated all of the material from the various components.  If someone in the group didn't participate, the remainder could each get 85% credit for their own section (not quite enough for an A in my class).  They were not penalized too much for someone else's failure but enough to encourage them to try as hard as possible to get everyone on board.
 
I hope that this helps.  Happy to discuss this further if you wish.
 
Harry    
 
 
 
 
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________________________________

From: Teaching Breakfast List on behalf of Jim Greenberg
Sent: Thu 9/10/2009 1:19 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: How to Form Groups?


TBers, 

I would like to put my students into small "groups" this semester to work on a final project.  I've done this before with various levels of success.  I worry about group compatibility, assessing their work as a group and individually, etc.  Can folks on this list tell me what they've done that has worked (and not worked)?  

How did you form the groups? 
How do you keep the groups functional? 
How did you assess the groups work? (and the individuals work)? 

Thanks. 

Mr. James B. Greenberg 
Director Teaching, Learning and Technology Center 
Milne Library 
SUNY College at Oneonta 
Oneonta, New York 13820 

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