This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

Group Sessions and Being More Interactive (How Vomitous!)

Do you dislike this thing called "breakout sessions" or "group sessions"? Do you cringe at comments like "this would be better if it were more interactive"? Are you one of the ones that audibly groan, indeed, suffer convulsions of nausea, when you hear "Now, let's break into small groups"? Then you'll love this rant.

So, I'm compiling some evaluation surveys of various staff development workshops held last year here at the library. As I compile some of the written statements, I'm running across things like "More group interaction so we know what others are thinking," "More group discussion," and "Be more interactive."

Gag! Cough! Spatter.

First of all, answer me this: What is a class but a group? Huh? It's a congregation of some thirty or forty individuals who collectively have signed up for a class. Therefore, anytime the class meets we are having a group session. QED.

"Oh," you say, "but we want smaller groups." Fine. Contact the administration and lobby for capping class size at twelve. I know for a fact that all your instructors will go for it.

What is it about group sessions that they are now the orthodoxy of paedogogy? I mean people don't even think when they write this tripe. You could facilitate the most dynamic lecture/discussion/multimedia presentation on Cartesian dualism, which both informs and entertains, as well as brings forth actual rational thought and analysis. And the evaluations would always read: "Needs more small groups."

"You're just a grouch. Important learning takes place in small groups that wouldn't take place otherwise."

Really.

So, what you're telling me is that the class of thirty-seven students (all but three of whom did not read the text, and of the three that did, two of them read it like a novel--with music blaring through headphones, sipping a latte, and after one reading put it down) is competent to sit down in groups of seven (which means you'll actually have to explain to the students that two groups will have eight members) and instruct each other in a text in which (in most groups) no one will actually have read it.

Yep. That'll work.

But okay, let's assume that the students have at least read some parts of the text. You expect all thirty-seven students to be competent enough to have not only analyzed the text but are then able to communicate that analysis to their peers, then discuss and debate differences of analysis, and following all that come to a consensus?

Of course, my mistake is to have them read a text at all. Silly dork, me.

No. Here's what happens in groups--if you're lucky. One student will take the assignment seriously, two or three will at least be interested enough in watching the serious student do her thing that they'll take part. The remaining four or five are grateful for an opportunity to cease all rational cognition (if they'd ever engaged in any in the first place). In the end, one student does the work of all seven, with minimal assistance of one or two others. And all get credit for the work of one.

No, all groups do is enforce groupthink. They accomplish social engineering in getting everyone to "go along" and "reach consensus." We all feel better that we could sacrifice our brains to the greater well-being of the Borg . . . er, I mean, the community.

Friggin' lemmings.

Posted by Clifton at December 10, 2004 11:56 AM | TrackBack