Curing those ol' omigod-not-another-group-class blues

Like many of you, we assign students to work groups in our classes so that they can learn from the experience of working together over the course of the semester. However, we have found that proposing group work elicits strong resistance from many students. They cite bad experiences with groups, both from classes and outside of school. Rewarding or satisfying group experiences are apparently rare exceptions and usually encountered only by those who have participated on athletic teams. Typically, education provides little training in the special skills and knowledge required to make a group work and work well. Left to their own devices, students, like managers, tend to focus on task or content, and overlook process issues. They are particularly likely to get off to a slow start in gathering and analyzing relevant data about the group or in building the group as an effective team. They also forget to close the loop on learning through self-evaluation and retrospection at the end of the group. Timely assignments and exercises can help students develop the in