Supporting Students to Reflect on their Group Work
To develop group skills, students need to do more than just complete group tasks. Along the way, it's important that they reflect on group processes. Reflection can be informal or formal (built into assessment). Students can reflect individually or in groups.
Students can reflect on both the processes and products of group work. When incorporating reflective activities into group work, it is important that students have the opportunity to apply what they have learnt through their reflections to future tasks to improve their learning. This section outlines a number of ways to build reflection into group tasks and projects.
Helping students monitor their development and reflect on their performance
Reflective activities.
To develop effective group skills, students need to practise using their skills and reflect on what worked and did not work. This helps them form generalised principles based on their experience, which then inform their future actions.
You can use one or more of the following strategies to help your students reflect on their group work skills. Depending on the nature of your group task or project, you might include a reflective activity during the task or at its completion. For example, at the end of the group task, students could submit a collaborative reflective report on group processes, or they could reflect on how to in the future by completing the student exercise: Planning ahead—What can I do better next time? ).
Helping students identify how they can improve
The following exercise helps students to think about their experiences in groups, about the group's functioning and about their individual roles and contributions to the group. Importantly, it also helps students to identify how the group might function more effectively next time. Using the prompts, students can reflect individually, then discuss their responses in groups or as a class.
Student exercise
- Active learning spaces
- Blended and online
- Brainstorming
- Case studies
- Flipped classroom
- Questioning
- Simulations
- Teaching diverse groups
- Helping Students Reflect
- Teaching Settings
Events & news
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Reflection can be informal or formal (built into assessment). Students can reflect individually or in groups. Students can reflect on both the processes and products of group work. When incorporating reflective activities into group work, it is important that students have the opportunity to apply what they have learnt through their reflections ...