Against Collaboration

Collaboration and group assignments are often touted as the keys to good, forward-thinking pedagogy - especially in an online environment.  However, instructors may need to think more deeply about when and how they assign group projects.  

The belief in classroom collaboration is often based off the idea that learners will need to collaborate "in the workplace" - but are instructors and instructional designers thinking clear-headedly about the differences between a classroom and collaboration in the real world?


Here's my current thesis: although they are often treated similarly, professional, academic collaboration is NOT AT ALL like classroom collaboration (although classroom collaboration may be a good way to learn how to prepare for professional collaboration?)

It seems like a lot of advice about classroom collaboration seems to treat collaboration in the classroom as though it were the same as professional collaboration - (just throw 'em in the deep end!  They'll have to learn some day!) when in fact it is often deeply different.

This thinking is informed by my instructional design class, where on top of learning academically about collaboration, I've been a learner assigned to collaborate on a group project.  For me, the two have been very informative - if offering somewhat contradictory perspectives.

In the professional (or I guess academic) world, you often choose your collaborators (and they choose you!).  Although I can imagine many situations where groups or teams are assigned, there are also many situations where you choose to work together to achieve a common purpose.  In those situations, you come together because you are all a) interested in the topic and b) share a professional goal in common and c) think that it will be beneficial to work together.

An example from my experience: myself and a few other teachers in my department decided to lead a workshop session on technology & writing pedagogy at a local conference.  We knew each other, had gone to grad school together, liked each other, and all loved teaching and had some experience teaching writing online.  I led the charge in terms of suggesting that we all present, but when it came to getting work done, we all contributed, each of us moving the project ahead or taking on some part of it.  We all offered ideas or something we wanted to share.  When I got crazy busy, they pitched in and moved the thing forward.   I don't know how they felt about it, but it felt like a good experience to me.

Classroom collaboration (or any assigned collaboration), on the other hand, can be a very different beast.   I'm thinking about this from the perspective of a teacher, but also, now, as a learner.  In a classroom, learners are often assigned to a group to work with.  Sometimes they are assigned a topic.  They are assigned a project or assessment.  And, because of this, there are going to be big differences between this and professional/academic collaboration.   You didn't choose each other, or what you'll be doing, or even sometimes what you'll be working on - so there can be varying levels of both engagement, motivation, interest and ability.

For example, some students might be really extrinsically motivated about getting good grades and getting the work done.  Others, less so.  Some students might be intrinsically motivated about the topic and want to do a lot of research and learning.  Others, less so. Some students might bring a lot of knowledge, experience or ability - either about the topic, or also about "project management" and "learning how to learn" skills:  how to structure projects, break down the work, set up timelines, read assignments, find information and do research (this gap might be smaller at higher levels of learning...but not necessarily!).  

Finally, there are some gaps that might be the same in professional collaboration: differences in experience level with collaboration itself, differences in knowledge of collaboration tools, and differences in time and ability to commit time to a project.  But these last three seem much easier to overcome: if everyone is excited about the project and open to learning about collaboration, then learning about a technology or learning to switch off leadership is much easier.

In retrospect, this helps make sense of why the group project I assigned was more or less a huge disaster.  I'd known there to be huge gaps in my students motivation and abilities (in all the ways just mentioned), but didn't think about how it would affect group dynamics. But it did. 

Students, assigned intentionally to groups of varying ability (just like I do for a peer review), HATED working in groups.  Faster students had to work with students with processing issues that made them very slow.  Motivated students had to work with students who were barely showing up or doing work.  Skilled "project managers" had to work with students who were struggling to understand the assignment, much less break it down into parts.  

Looking back, I realize that a high-stakes group assignment is very different than a peer review (or other types of collaboration I'd done previously).  In a peer review, you are not collaborating to produce a product.  Helping your peers is your whole assignment: to lend your expertise to assisting someone else.  (Hopefully, by acting as an "expert" your skills will also grow).  

In a lot of the work we do in class, I do often expect more skilled students to basically do some of my teaching for me by working one-on-one or in a small group with less skilled students.  But this is done for short, small engagements, usually in the classroom, usually on very low stakes activities. 

What I know now is churning out a product together in a high stakes assignment is completely different, especially on top of completing an essay independently.  Instead of focusing on lifting each other's writing up, they instead (or also) had to focus on wrangling gnarly group dynamics: tracking down classmates who didn't do the work or didn't show up, improvising when people didn't do their parts, re-explaining the assignment, or arguing about what they were going to do. 

Their grades for that paper were noticeably worse. (Of course, it was also a much more "independent" assignment, without as much structure from me, so that could also have been a factor).

So - I am not necessarily against collaboration.  But I do think that classroom dynamics need to be taken into consideration when planning group work as an instructor.  I think absolutely that students need to practice working in groups of mixed abilities, temperaments, experiences - even motivation levels! I can imagine many workplace-assigned "teams" where similar dynamics may be in play.  But practicing these skills, in the context of my hugely busy, overwhelmed and overburdened students, needs to also be humane.

When we started learning about groups, I thought that simply learning about group dynamics and giving support to learning about collaboration (and collaboration tools) would be sufficient.  Now I see it's much more complex than that, especially when teams don't choose each other or their tasks. 

In the future, although it's tough to do in a packed composition semester, I can see myself scaffolding collaboration work by having smaller, shorter term collaboration assignments.  I can see myself allowing students to pick out their own collaborators for larger assignments.  But I can also see that my class might not be appropriate for high stakes collaboration.  

My students, forced to take my class, have a huge range of motivation, engagement, time, writing skills & "knowing how to learn" abilities.  A significant chunk will drop out because it's a tough class, and they lack the motivation to do the work.  Or they have "outside forces" impeding their abilities: sick children, family crisis, etc.  Some students are taking 4 courses AND working 40 hours a week.  Some have learning differences or are struggling with English as a second language.  Some are able to stay and thrive and grow tremendously; however, some are truly just hanging on and need a ton of coaching, tutoring, or other intervention just to make it through the course.  

So, I guess what I'm saying is - collaboration needs to be done with a lot of thought and intention - particularly about the learners and the context of the learning.

For more about how exactly I've updated my group assignments to be more responsive to these factors, read my "update" post here.