Title: Learners learning together
Course: Digivisio - DEMO course template > Section: Activating learners

Teacher’s presence is not always required or even beneficial, and studies can also contain tasks where learners work together online. The content of the task of course varies depending on what is being taught, but regardless of their field, the learners need to learn how to schedule their lives and how to work online with people they do not necessarily know – this is what the working life needs now and in the future. The learners also become more proficient in self-direction, as they are responsible for their own learning and the learning of others. Learners may complain about the amount of group work, so you need to consider them carefully, but on the other hand, working life requires working in groups and learning things through other methods than “listening to a lecture.” This type of active learning often leads to better learning results than the passive listening to an “online lecture.”

You need to instruct any group work especially carefully, and do not assume learners know how to work in groups without being instructed. This takes a bit of time. When creating the instructions, it is good to, once again, focus on the learning goals of the course: how does this group work help the learners to reach those goals?

Tips for group work

- Guide the learners to finding a suitable communications channel for their group and committing to it. It does not necessarily have to be an “official” communication channel of the educational institution (email, Teams etc.). More important, all group members must use it.
- The learners should create some sort of division of work, but the end result must be coherent. It must be the work of the entire group, so should not e.g. contain sections where two learners have written about the same thing without knowing what the other did: not a sign of a good group work.
- Make sure everybody understands the assignment. This can be done, for example by asking the groups to create a short draft of the final contents at the beginning of the group work.
- Make sure the learners know what to do if a member of the group does not participate or if there are conflicts within the group. In these cases, you need to step in, reorganise groups, or de-escalate conflicts.
- Make evaluation clear. What is being evaluated, and how are different members evaluated. Is the final product evaluated (competences), or also how the group worked together? The evaluation must seem fair to the learners: if somebody does not participate, do they get the same grade as the others? On the other hand, can the learners support each other and help the weaker – but active – learners to get a better grade?
- Have a few check-points along the way, to make sure all learners and groups are still working actively.