• The "BIGs" Program
• Cases
• Cooperative Learning
  • Benefits of cooperative learning or teaming
  • Creating a climate for cooperative learning
  • Diversity issues
  • Forming small groups
  • Assessing small group cooperative learning
• Building Community
• Assessment
• Resources

BIGs Insights > Cooperative Learning > Forming small groups

Forming Small Groups

One of the roles of the instructor is to organize students into small groups at the beginning of the course. It is less effective to allow students to form teams on their own; they may self-select into teams whose members all have similar skills and points of view, according to Susan Ledlow of the Coalition Foundation. Susan Ledlow (1999) suggests that at the start of the course the instructor might obtain biographical information about students so that group composition is heterogeneous in terms of background, experience and skills. Enrolled in the typical BIGs seminar course are 20-22 students, and optimal group size is 4-5 students (Ledlow, 1999) and thus your class will be composed of about 4 or 5 small groups. Depending on the learning goals of your course, the teams may remain the same throughout the semester, or may change periodically. Generally, instructors in BIGs assigned groups to ensure that everyone got to work with everyone else in the class, and these groups were reassigned for each new case that was presented. This approach can be effective but may have some drawbacks, as well. The idea is to allow everyone in the class to work together and get to know one another. On the other hand, effective teamwork takes time and a substantial effort from all members of the group. If groups are constantly reassigned after 2-3 week periods, it may not allow adequate time for groups to coalesce as effective teams. In one of the past BIGs, the group assignments remained unchanged for the entire semester which seemed to work well. However, a number of the students in this BIG commented that “while they liked the students in their group, they would have liked the experience of working with different people in the class."

Most of the students entering the BIGs program seem to have had some experience working in groups – small group learning – in high school. As such, the faculty felt, rather unanimously, that the students were already quite savvy with regard to working in small groups. Whether this observation reflected that the students were, indeed, knowledgeable about productive “teamwork” was unclear. Nevertheless, the students did have experiences working in small groups and the faculty did not observe any obvious problems in which they had to intervene. On occasion, certain personalities clashed, but because the groups were together for such a short time, this was never really a problem. Many experts on the topic of cooperative learning feel very strongly about the distinction between small student groups and teams (references). Simply because students have worked in small groups does not necessarily mean they are adept at teamwork. Oftentimes students who have worked in small groups have reported that it was a negative experience for the following reasons:

• The other members of the group come unprepared
• The group seems unorganized, loses track of time, or gets off task
• We can never get our group together to complete the project
• I do all the work
• My grade is pulled down by the others

Therefore, the assumption that students who have worked in small groups understand effective teamwork skills is not always valid. The instructor might consider spending time in the beginning of the course discussing small group cooperative learning, with an emphasis on teamwork skills.

Team-based Learning: The Power of Teams for Powerful Learning is an extremely helpful website containing information and ideas for teaming in the classroom. www.teambasedlearning.org

The evolution from small groups to effective teams is nicely stated on the homepage of this website:

• When a teacher initially puts students into a group, the students are a "group," not a "team."
• As the students begin to trust each other and develop a commitment to the goals and welfare of the group, they become a team.
• When they become a cohesive team, the team can do things that neither a single individual nor a newly-formed group can do.
• Team-based learning starts with groups and then creates the conditions that enable them to become teams. From: Team-based Learning: The Power of Teams for Powerful Learning.

(Kreg Gruben wrote a computer program for setting up randomized groups throughout the semester. New faculty might have an interest in acquiring this program – could be made available in the database).

Lessons from workshops:
Many experts agree that assigning roles to members of the team will help the team function more smoothly and effectively (refs).

Team composition and roles: (roles should rotate among team members)
meeting coordinator, recorder, timekeeper, encourager, gatekeeper and devil’s advocate.

Meeting coordinator: coordinates and prepares the agenda (what tasks need to be accomplished, establishes process); ensures all necessary resources are available for meetings; keeper of the “code of cooperation”; monitors decision making process. All members must keep in mind that this person is NOT the BOSS.

Recorder: responsible for writing down all work done by the group; should maximize group participation and performance since no else needs to worry about writing things down; should write down processes used by the team and prepare an ACTION LIST – to keep record of assigned tasks/actions; provides copies of document to rest of the group.

Timekeeper: responsible for keeping tract of time, and keeping the group on-task.

Encourager/gatekeeper: encourages all the other team members; enables a balanced level of participation by all the team members – they will encourage/prompt silent members and hold back (respectfully and diplomatically) verbose, dominant members.

Devil’s advocate: takes a position opposite to that held by the group to ensure that all sides of the issue are considered. All members should take on this responsibility.

In BIGs, some but not the entire faculty felt there was some utility in assigning group roles. However, they did not always adhere to the well-defined roles outlined above.

“I did point out different roles – leader, organizer, researcher, presenter - for all of the groups …. we made a point of the importance of everyone participating, made a point of the value of others’ contributions …. so the groups were effective when everyone could play a participatory role, even though those roles might be different.” -Jon Woods

Generally, the faculty observed that students self-organized in their groups. In some cases, a clear leader emerged, mostly because they had expertise or prior knowledge that was particularly helpful to the group. In other cases, the groups reached a consensus agreement on the way they wanted to run the group and approach the case – no clear leader was identified.