Good Problems and Effective Structures for Groups

Context-rich group problems help students to focus on the concepts and principles that are needed to solve them. They have the following general characteristics:

• Problem statement does not always specify the unknown to be computed.
• More information may be available than is needed to solve the problem.
• Some of the information needed to solve the problem may be missing from the question. Students need to determine what the missing information is and how to come up with it.
• Reasonable assumptions may need to be made to simplify the problem and allow for a meaningful solution.

Groups of three and four members are found to generate better plans for solving problems and a solution with fewer conceptual mistakes than pairs. Pairs usually have no mechanism for deciding between two strongly held viewpoints. In groups of four, one student was invariably left out of the problem-solving process. That person is usually the most timid or the most knowledgeable.

Homogeneous gender groups and mixed gender groups of two females and one male performed better than groups with two males and one female.

Groups with mixed ability performed as well as groups consisting of only high-ability students (who tend to make problems more complicated than necessary or overlook the obvious), and better than groups with students of only low or medium ability. Low ability students contribute by keeping the groups on track by pointing out the obvious and simple ideas, and requesting for clarification of the concepts and procedures that are needed to solve the problems (which the higher ability students sometimes realize their wrong assumptions and mistakes when they justify their solutions to them).

To avoid dominance of any student in a group, or to avoid a group from jumping at the first possible solution to avoid conflict in the group, two strategies can be used:

1. have students take on special roles. In a three member group, the roles of Manager (who designs plans for action and suggests solutions), Skeptic (who questions premises and plans), and Checker / Recorder (who organizes and keeps track of the discussions) can be assigned.
2. have the students reflect on how well their groups have worked and suggest ways of improvement at the end of each activity.
   

Reference:

Heller, P., Hollabaugh, M. (July 1992). Teaching Problem Solving Through Cooperative Group. Part 2. Designing Problems and Structuring Groups. American Association of Physics Teachers. 60(7). pp 637 - 644.

Is Collaborative Group Learning Useful?

A study on the effectiveness of group problem solving was conducted by Heller et al. (1992). The instructional approach was as follows:

• students were taught general problem-solving strategies
• a set of context-rich practice and test problems were given to help students focus their attention on the need to use conceptual knowledge to analyze a problem
• students worked in carefully managed groups to practice solving context-rich problems

Students' work were judged based on "expert" level of problem solving which is characterized by the following:

• evidence of conceptual understanding
• usefulness of information identified to solve the problems
• match of equations with information identified
• reasonable plan
• logical progression
• appropriate mathematics

Results: Group problem solutions were significantly better than those produced by the best problem solvers from each group on matched problems. Individual problem solving performance also improved over time. The key seems to be explicit problem solving strategy instruction and having the students practice using the strategy in groups.

Reference:

Heller, P., Keith, R., Anderson, S. (July 1992). Teaching Problem Solving Through Cooperative Grouping. Part 1: Group versus Individual Problem Solving. American Association of Physics Teachers. 60(7). pp 627 - 636.

Tutorials and the Significant Role of the TA's

It is unfortunate that many TA's are so busy with their research and course work that they often have minimal time to devote to tutorial preparation, whether in the material to be covered or teaching methods. A study by Koenig et al (2007) found that student performance gain in learning drastically improved in tutorials where students work in groups with TA's interaction using Socratic dialogue over tutorials where they work alone, or where they learn in a traditional lecture setting, or even in groups by themselves without other inputs from TA's. Student satisfaction of tutorials is clearly linked to the teaching performance of the TA's.

Interestingly though, when students were asked which style of tutorial did they prefer, more students indicate a traditional lecture style than Socratic group discussion with a TA, even though it is less effective. Perhaps the latter style moves the students out of their comfort zone a tad more than what they are used to and may seem to demand more work from them? In any case, this latter style seems to be more successful in moving students away from their initial misconceptions in the tutorials.

In order to implement such learning / teaching style in the tutorials, TA's will require weekly training to prepare for the tutorials. They have to work through the material and they need guidance on how to use Socratic dialogue with each tutorial topic.

Reference:

Koenig, K., Endorf, R., Braun, G. (15 May 2007). Effectiveness of Different Tutorial Recitation Teaching Methods and Its Implications for TA Training. The American Physical Society. Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research. 3, 010104-1 to 010104-9.