A very interesting piece from an NAIS blogger on cooperative learning.
My experience was the opposite of that of the author of the blog. As a science major, I had lab partners from Middle School through graduate school, and exactly three of them enabled the “us” to work better than the “me.” With all the others, I had either to do most of the work or double-check their work if I needed to rely on their data. Otherwise, we tended to work independently even if in proximity to each other.
As a result, I came to the conclusion that group work is only synergistic if I get to choose the group. I’ve heard a variant of that insight from others, mostly from friends talking about their college and business school projects: The group is more powerful than the individual when each member brings a different strength or skill set to the mix–which is more likely in professional settings rather than K-12 ones–particularly in a school like this one which has in a number of areas (in US, at least) often been much more focused on having small standard deviations in grades than in creativity or output.
Put these experiences together with what the author describes, and I have to agree that collaboration that is designed in from the ground up is much more likely to be effective. Assignments that are adapted from those expected of individuals will probably not work as well as those designed to be collaborative from the get-go. I also suspect that work designed to answer specific questions or solve specific problems is easier to turn into effective group work than assignments focused on the individual–but maybe that’s an erroneous conclusion drawn from a small sample size.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the issue if you’re willing to share them.
