the good, the bad, and the ugly of small groups

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Advocacy in Action is almost wrapping up. This whole process has been filled with a lot of learning curves for me as an instructor. Throughout the time watching my groups develop, work together, and panic at the end I now have time to reflect on how their group development went.

Some groups are wrapping up better than others. The donation collections team is currently hanging on by threads with a mere three active members in their group. One student comes every now and then and the other two members are MIA. Now all that’s left to do is some damage control. I don’t want them to leave with a sour taste in their mouth when they think of small groups. With less than one month remaining I’m having to think about how I can end on a positive note with working in groups. I know there’s still hope left for them. So now the question I’m asking myself is do I keep them in their AIA groups or put them in random groups for think/pair/share and other classroom activities? Can they recover from some not so great small group experiences? 

I hope the answer is yes.

While some groups may have struggled to get acclimated to their group climate, they were still able to reach their end goal (well almost, because they still have some remaining tasks to complete). Instead of thinking about the things that I thought could have been improved on in the AIA groups, I need to also pull the positives from them. I do have to keep in mind that not all their group work was a bust. Cooper and Simmonds (2003) noted that some advantages of being in small groups include “enhancing student motivation and fostering positive attitudes towards the subject matter” (p. 118). By having them working in small groups for an extended period of time I saw students talk more in class, talk to each other after class, and simply interact as colleagues. Placing my students in small groups in a sense helped the class run a little smoother because they had others to rely on and get information from. Small groups helped my students foster classroom relationships and work together to achieve their goal.

Way back when we covered instructional strategies, I realize that information has been following me ever since. With Advocacy in Action groups, I saw the good, bad, and ugly that came with their informal roles. It wasn’t like the activity we did in pedagogy because these group members weren’t acting out a role, they were these roles. Cooper and Simmonds (2003) noted that there are three types of informal roles from task, maintenance, and disruptive. (p. 192). During in-class workdays I saw students who dominated group conversations, those who barely talked because they had headphones in, and those who were actively involved. At one point a group member from the leadership team asked me “am I talking too much?” I was surprised at his self-awareness but none the less very thankful that he was looking to better his participation in the group. To me, he was teetering the line of being a stagehog and being an initiator-contributor. Not an ideal or even functional combo, I know. Luckily this student was willing to work on how he interacted with his group and change some of his approaches. Of course, this wasn’t the case for all the groups considering a few of them were still trying to get group members to answer their GroupMe. I just wanted to go to each group and point out the ways they could improve their dynamic but I knew I needed to let them function independently. I’m wondering if they recognized the stagehog, the coordinator, the feeling expresser, or the cynic throughout their time working together. Now that the project is almost over, I will have the opportunity to read their peer evaluations and see if they identify and talk indirectly about any of these informal roles.  

Yes, there are pros and cons to small groups. While I’ve been nitpicking at the cons, I know I need to also count for the pros. Having my students work in a group for the majority of the semester sure has been a learning experience. Only their evaluations will tell what this experience was like for them. I’m optimistic that the majority of them found this project to be successful. Here’s to hoping.

Now, it’s time to start wrapping up and helping my students reach the finish line successfully. Less the one moth, folks.

#andthatstheT