A Pedagogical Outcome of Grouping Students

Kris Shaffer (@krisshaffer) mentioned yesterday on Twitter that there was “no pedagogical need for students to be grouped and taught according to similar stages of intellectual development.”  This reminded me of a story from undergrad that may tangentially be related to #moocmoc. Not necessarily in terms of this week’s topic of anarchy but rather in relation to critical pedagogy in general. 

 In my third year of my second undergraduate program I had the opportunity to take a wonderful life changing Renaissance course with an amazing professor. It was a class of about 30 or so students and the professor pushed us hard. How? Well he had weekly reading quizzes that involved recall of the most minute of details from the texts we were reading “ In what hand did the Redcrosse Knight hold his shield?” “Who is guarding the Gates of Hell in Paradise Lost?” (There were other aspects/activities/assignments to this course of course but this was the one defining one for me...and you will see why)

 Now pedagogically this seems all low-level recall (knowledge, listing) remembering facts for the sake of facts. Now the professor upped the ante, he asked us all to pick a pseudonym at the beginning of the semester and then would post the quiz grades based on pseudonyms on his office door. The quizzes were tallied weekly and the person with the best quiz scores at the end of the semester would get a prize. Whoa, whoa I hear you saying, rewarding rote memorization with competitive carrot giving. What a pedagogical nightmare. 

Interestingly the outcome was far from it. The students who self-identified as weaker in both understanding of the text and retention of said facts reached out to the stronger students and formed study groups. Every week there was a line up at the professor's door to see the scores. The groups would meet once a week to talk about the texts and each group developed individualized strategies in order to assist the group as a whole to do well. It was one of the most rewarding classroom experiences of my undergrad for not only was I learning and analyzing new material but I was then in turn helping others learn and apply that material as well. 

At the end of the semester the winner was announced (someone who still to this day is one of my closest friends) and full disclosure I ended up in third (but not for lack of trying so very hard). Also everyone knew who I was because I really am transparent with my pseudonym choices apparently (Ophelia, really? Lol). But then an even more interesting thing happened. The professor, who had had many of us as students the year before or years previous in his Shakespeare course, announced the following: “This is by far the strongest group of students I have ever had in this course, you all worked together and those of you who came in with a bar set high, you managed to raise that bar for both yourself and other students who may have had their own bars set very low. As a class you strove for excellence and you achieved it and I am proud of you all.”

So similar to what Kris said, any group of students can be placed together and learn from each other and from the experience, regardless of their perceived or actual intellectual engagement previously.  If we go into our educational spaces with this philosophy in mind, even those who may be the weakest students will end the semester feeling stronger and more confident in their work.