What makes for great collaboration? Great collaboration is ideal when all parties have a vested interest in the work they are doing. Parties may be interested in collaborating to create a great product. Other groups are forced to work with each other and collaboration is minimal. An observation I have is that when students get to choose their own groups minimal work gets done. Reasons?
- Friends want to be friends and be social.
- There is little accountability because friends may not want to upset one another.
Taking some time to think about this I found that groups need guidelines. Before I go further, I know this but I made an assumption that eighth grade students would know these guidelines and follow them. Not the case today.
Tomorrow will bring guidelines for students to follow.