With one week before the thesis submission deadline, one of my students e-mailed me saying that he doesn’t want to continue working with his group, as he was aiming for a high grade – unlike his peers, apparently. He wanted to continue on his own, if possible.
What is ”the right solution” to such a situation? As it turns out, it depends…on the culture, type of project / assignment, and on the consequences not only for that specific student, but for the entire group. What is my responsibility as a teacher in this situation? No one ever brings that up in our training as educators, and , as we also discussed during these two weeks, this is an essential aspect of our profession. How do we manage conflicts and what is our role as teachers?
If this were a work context, where a project had one week until deadline, the answer would have been – most likely – a NO. Firstly, because what matters in this case is the project completion, and secondly, since teams are usually pre-assigned, it is generally impossible to choose your own team mates. If we were to really prepare students for work life, groups should rather be assigned by us, ideally with the goal of having different /complementary set of skills within the same team. What if we would have a set of questions related to attitude towards group work, as well as perception of individual strengths / weaknesses as a tool for group building instead?
So what did I reply to this student? Well, perhaps not surprisingly, I had no idea how to handle the situation, so i turned to my course responsible – who, in spite of having many more years of experience, seemed as well unsure of what is the best action. If I had to decide single-handedly, i would have told X that he can’t do that , especially with one week before the deadline. However, given the relative power that students have in Sweden, as well as the cultural tendency to avoid conflicts, the final answer was that he can do that, as long as his peers agree, but he will not be able to write the thesis on his own next semester, since that was actually against what was written in the course curriculum.
Ironically, i ended up as being X’s new group supervisor next semester. He seemed to get along much better with his new group , but i eventually decided to talk to him about his past action, and that it wasn’t okay. He should really consider carefully how his actions can affect his peers, manager, and eventually the outcome of a specific project in ”real-life” work situations. Latly, l left him with a (rhetoric) question: ”Before taking such a decision, why don’t you put yourself in others’ shoes? (and by that, i meant both his peers, but also his supervisor / manager).”
This little story, as well as the fact that, for the first time ever, I was a moderator (with one other course participant) for the two weeks on the topic of Networked Collaborative Learning, made me reflect even more on the importance of having different perspectives. I had one colleague who would leave a lot of the teaching, and even assessment of various assignments, to his students. While they initially weren’t happy (to say the least..) about it, the final course evaluations were excellent.
Therefore, instead of keeping the uni-directional, traditional model of lectures even in the online environment, we should instead give students’ more responsibilties, and the possibility to switch roles. If the same person gets to be a student, teacher, examiner and moderator within the same course, wouldn’t that improve learning, teamwork skills and eventually prepare them better for the work life? I strongly believe that is the case.
Switching roles also means , in a broader sense, gaining experience as both a leader and a follower. While most of us prefer one role over the other, i believe both ”sides” are needed for a complete / overarching learning experience.
This immediately makes me think of something I’m very passionate about: dancing. I have been dancing many years lindy hop as a follower, and only recently I started to learn to lead. By doing that, I could see the very same dance and steps from a very different perspective. Firstly, i realised that dancing well as a follower doesn’t really make a difference for learning how to lead – on the contrary, it seems very difficult at times to switch, given that following became, at this point, a habit. Secondly, i am much more understanding now towards the leaders, realising that not only they have to know the specific steps, but always plan ahead the next move and consider the consequences of their current step. Just as managers would need to take into account both current and future work / projects of the teams they are leading. And thirdly, i can see why some of my actions as a follower, might make it more difficult to lead. Dancing, as well as coursework, assignments, projects, or really any type of relationships, involve teamwork. Meaning the need to communicate efficiently, but also to consider the responsibilities, knowledge and motivation of the other part(ies) involved. And, sadly, what all these activities have in common is the fact that initial roles can rarely be switched, and that, in my opinion, has to change!
For the curious ones, here’s a really cool video about switching roles in dancing, and its much wider implications:
