How to Make a Group Work Productive?

“Too many cooks spoil the broth” or “Many hands make light work”?
Those are two sayings that a teacher should bear in mind whenever she wants to employ a classroom activity which involves all of her students in the class or which requires the students to work with each other. Why does a teacher need to think of those two sayings? A teacher should consider those sayings for some reasons like whether the activities really encourage the students to interact in the group discussion, whether the activity is an effective way to enforce the students learning in the group, and whether the group discussion really becomes productive.  The point is that a teacher should know how to make the classroom activity involving students to work together facilitate students learning, so they can learn and eventually make use of their learning in their lives. According to Johnson and Johnson (1998), there are five key elements on how to make group discussion become effective and productive. They are Positive Interdependence, Face to Face Interaction, Individual and Group Accountability, Interpersonal and Small-Group Skills, and Group Processing.

Positive Interdependence
To create positive interdependence within groups, the group task must be designed so that the participation of every member is necessary to its completion, and students must clearly understand their interdependence in accomplishing the task. It is advisable if the task can tap the student’s individual strengths by highlighting the variation among group members.
Interdependence can be obtained by doing the following ways:

1. Goals can be made interdependent by assigning a task that requires each member to contribute for the group to be successful. In other words, they sink or swim together.
2. Resources can be distributed to ensure each group member has a unique piece of information essential for completing a task, and no one can complete the task alone or without each member’s contribution.
3. Rewards are excellent motivators for interdependence when given both for individual contribution to the group task and for the overall group effort and result. Group members then know they have a stake in each other’s learning and their own.
4. Roles can be assigned to give each group member a distinct way to participate in the group’s work. Each member’s job should be necessary to completing the task.

Face-to-Face Interaction
To consolidate and build new understanding, groups need to have considerable face-to-face interaction. Importantly, these interactions should be designed to encourage the exchange of ideas and not just to work out the logistics of completing the task. We can see sometimes that students avoid interacting with each other by merely spitting up work on a task and agreeing to put the individual pieces together as a whole while actually this seems to be a given of group work.
Individual and Group Accountability
As teachers, our concern is that each student learns. For this reason, a teacher needs to create an accountability system that provides feedback to the individual learner as well as to the group. Teachers often assign both an individual and a group grade for a group task. They key to this accountability system is that the members of the group are aware that each individual will receive a grade that each is a participant in the evaluation process. Each group member may provide feedback on his or her own performance and the work of others. Johnson and Johnson (1994) also suggest that a group “checker” be identified to ask each member to explain the group’s work or responses.
Interpersonal and Small-Group Skills
Group work should promote frequent use of interpersonal and small-group skills. These are some of the applied skills held in such high regards by employers, and they include the ability to resolve conflicts in a constructive manner, to communicate effectively, and to ably draw upon strengths of others to solve problems. No matter how young the students are, they who feature productive group work are learning each day how to organize and coordinate efforts and are acquiring a results-oriented outlook that will serve them well through years to come.
These valuable skills can be taught and practiced in the classroom. For example, students learn how to offer help to others. They learn also need to know when and how to request assistance from others as well as to accept such offers. At the heart of practicing interpersonal skills is the reality that all of us are, at different times, givers and receivers of help. Reciprocity in supporting one another is essential if students are to reach productive results.
Group Processing
Although it’s the most easily overlooked of all the elements of cooperative learning, frequent and regular group processing is the key to a group’s future effectiveness. Teachers often forget to include this step in their group work design. And even it is incorporated, in this rush to finish the project, turn in the assignment, and hurry off to the next class, students can shortchange assessing their work as a group. However, the opportunity for groups to talk to one another about what worked and what didn’t is crucial to future success. It’s not a matter of blaming individuals, but , rather, of figuring out what should change and what should be retained. Educators know that the complex task of school improvement requires the analysis of successes and areas that need improvement. In the same way, learners need an opportunity to notice what they did well and what got in the way.