Reading #7 - Collaborative Projects (Skillen, 2011)

Group work has always been a major stressor in my life.  As a type-A individual, I often have a hard time 'letting go' of areas of projects because I feel like I need to be involved in everything that happens! I believe that group work throughout my academic career has taught me more about trust than about anything else.  If anything, group work has taught me to 'trust no one' and to be careful about engaging with certain kinds of people.  Isn't that awful?  I thought group work was all about meeting new people and sharing ideas.

As a new teacher I will undoubtedly assign my projects with this in mind.  During my practicum I was careful to design group projects how I, as a student, would have appreciated them being designed.  I allowed students some choice of who they were grouped with, I provided them the opportunity to self-evaluate and to evaluate their peers and had these evaluations play into their final assigned mark.  Regardless of these efforts, my students still ran into obstacles and group work wasn't a 'highlight' of their experience in my classroom.  

A large part of the reason why group work exists is to encourage leadership, we want our students to be 'extroverted' and engaged with everyone around them.  This article made me go back through my bookmarked 'Ted' talks to find an interesting presentation given by Susan Cain on why introverts are so important.  Her talk also highlights the way the current school system is neglecting the 'introvert'.  Click here to watch!

I am especially interested in the author's idea for groups to create blogs to promote higher-level thinking.  Groups can start up a webpage or a blog where they each share, individually and as a group, their experiences as they move forward in a project.  I think this is a fantastic idea for a classroom.  If I assigned a month-long project I could require that each week, one different member of each group would post a 'reflection' on a major question involving the project's subject.  Afterwards, each other member of the group would have to post a comment.  If universities are trending towards this style of discussion, I think it is something that high school teachers would be wise to introduce earlier on.