Group dynamics and social capitol
19 July 2008
Social capital, according to Niemela (2003), is the ability of citizens to cooperate, to use resources, to create networks, to become engaged with each other, and to take responsibility for issues affecting the community. The degree to which individuals engage with the issues is the degree to which social capital increases.
(from Creating Self-Awareness of Learning that Occurs in Community by Imel and Stein, page 117)
Who can argue with this? But here’s the rub, as I see it in terms of practical application, whether in a traditional classroom setting or in an online class, students are rarely allowed to form their own learning communities. Most often groups are formed arbitrarily by the instructor, thereby potentially negating, in my mind, the most valuable aspect of group formation: the active desire to be a part of that group.
If, for whatever reason, even a single member of the group does not want to be a part of that group then the group as a whole suffers, reducing its social capitol.
Of course, we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater (was this ever really a problem?), so it seems to me that discussion on how to create a “more perfect” situation (a group where members want to belong) out of the inherently imperfect situation that a classroom, virtual or otherwise, presents (people who are there for a variety of different motivations) is much needed.
Certainly in my writing classrooms I’ve formed groups arbitrarily, but this method is only used for short-term (one class period) focused assignments (peer review of essays) where they are given very explicit instructions about how to complete a very specific task. In other words, in these situations creating social capitol is not the primary goal.
But what if it is, or at least what if it’s one of the primary goals, as is often the situation with longer-term group projects involving broader, often somewhat less precisely defined, goals? How can we somehow manufacture what in society occurs organically? This is something I’ve played with in the past and, while nothing has yet satisfied me completely, the tactic I have come to rely on most is a hybrid of my own judgment and the student’s own desire. I almost never form long-term groups early in the semester as there is often just too much instability (the adding and dropping of students, mostly) to ensure a relatively consistent group size. Instead I wait and watch and take note of how each individual student’s personality expresses itself. To get a broader range of observations I make fairly heavy use early on of the aforementioned arbitrarily-formed groups, watching not just for how well the group performs the assigned task but also for how individual personalities play off each other and taking mental notes specifically in regards to which parings seem productive and which do not. Then, in introducing a group project I usually make the focus of each group slightly different and I have the students write down, in order of preference, in which of the three groups they’d prefer to be. Using these lists and my own observations, groups are formed.
Inevitably not everyone gets their number one choice, but it’s actually been fairly rare that someone “gets stuck” with their number three. What usually results is a feeling of having chosen their own affiliation and, because everyone else in the group did so as well, there is an immediate commonality upon which the group can build. This doesn’t always work out perfectly, but it has worked very effectively to address the one situation that I find most damaging to the construction of social capitol—interpersonal conflict within a group.
A View of Today's Student
13 May 2008
A short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today — how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.
Web 2.0 explained in under 5 minutes
13 May 2008
This is very, very cool, even if it is starry-eyed.
This incredible video called “Web 2.0… the Machine is Us/ing Us,” is deeply moving and incredibly smart. The creator is Michael Wesch, an assistant Cultural Anthropology Prof at Kansas State U, and he has strung together a bunch of animations, text, and screenshots in order to tell the story of “Web 2.0” — and why it matters, and how it’s changing the world. This is as starry-eyed as techno-optimism gets, and it might just choke you up a little, if you are care about this stuff.
(via Boing Boing )
The Price of Propaganda
25 May 2006
I received an email recently with this text:
Read the following explanation before looking at the picture! This picture is not doctored. Most Syrians struggle to even read Arabic, much less have a clue about English. So, how do a group of Syrian protest leaders create the most impact with their signs by having the standard “Death To Americans” (etc.) slogans printed in English?
Answer: They simply hire an English-speaking civilian to translate and write their statements into English. Unfortunately, in this case, they were unaware that the “civilian” insurance company employee hired for the job was a retired US Army sergeant! Obviously, pictures of this protest rally never made their way through the Arab TV networks, but the results were “Priceless.”
which was then followed by this “authentic” picture:
I hope everyone got a good chuckle out of this…
You’re laughing at the person who wrote the explanation, not the picture, right? See, everything here is a lie.
Comment on this [11]
Thoreau was a Buddhist
28 March 2006
The April issue of Harper’s Magazine features an essay by Curtis White entitled “The Spirit of Disobedience: An Invitation to Resistance” that everyone should read immediately1.
White begins the essay by establishing the problem:
According to our leading wise men, the great contemporary moral and political question of the age is: Are we fundamentally a Christian or an Enlightenment culture?
Problem? How is that statement a problem? And it’s true, insomuch as the recent debates over stem-cell research and “Intelligent Design” can now be stacked on the shelf alongside other, more well-worn luminaries such as school prayer, abortion rights, capital punishment, et al, that the debate of faith versus science, specifically as it relates to matters of national character, has long been a feature of Western discourse.
Of course, we should know better. The length, volume, or even ferocity of any argument is no sure indicator of its importance or even relevance.
1 Harper’s does not publish their content online and, as a subscriber and supporter of their mission (and they’re a non-profit to boot), I won’t link directly to the article, even though I have downloaded a copy from the FCC Library. If you’d like a copy of the article I’d recommend a trip to your local newstand/bookstore. Barring that, if you have access to a decent library that has good database access, that’s a viable route to go as well. Lastly, and in following Harper’s copyright guidelines, I will gladly email the article to anyone who asks. Just drop me a note or leave a comment. Thanks for understanding.
Comment on this [1]