Working in group improves students’ performance and productivity

What are the group work benefits? Although some introverts dislike the idea of working with teammates, it has been proven that teamwork has numerous advantages for the individuals.
“Two heads are better than one” is a common phrase that we hear in all sorts of environments: In the office, at home and at school. However, this ancient idiom never fails to prove that humans were made to live andwork in community.

Firstly, people who work together in order to accomplish a task possess more information than an individual who works alone. Furthermore, thanks to the exchange of information and to the communication dynamics, groups can process information as a way of adopting the right answers to the problem and rejecting the wrong ones. 

More information – Better answers

As a matter of fact, a research study published by the American Psychological Association (APA) has stated that “Groups of three, four, or five perform better on complex problem solving than the best of an equivalent number of individuals”. 

Patrick Laughlin, the head author of this research paper, studied how 760 students from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign solved two letters-to-numbers coding problems as individuals or as groups of two, three, four and five people. Thanks to this research, Laughlin was able to understand the differences of the performance between the individuals who worked solo and the groups of two, three, four and five members, aiming to explain one of the many group work benefits.

Calculated risks

Another essential factor of teamwork are risky decisions. Indeed, when people work collaboratively in teams, they wouldn’t hesitate to take calculated risks because there is a team supporting them, whereas people working individually wouldn’t be as likely to make risky decisions. Nowadays, this type of behavior is essential in order to create and develop innovative ideas.

In fact, the international scientific journal Nature has shown through thorough research that “Smaller teams have tended to disrupt science and technology with new ideas and opportunities, whereas larger teams have tended to develop existing ones”. 

Group work helps with personal growth 

Moreover, working in groups can also be useful to share the emotional load the work implies, helping to prevent stress, anxiety and burnout. Additionally, students who are engaged with the team’s missions and solutions are more likely to achieve high levels of satisfaction and fulfillment.

On top of that, teamwork is an important tool to improve performance and personal growth. To give an example, teams made up of members from different backgrounds have better creativity and productivity thanks to the diverse perspectives and ways of analyzing a problem. In addition, the participants are capable of exchanging new ideas and concepts that can lead to personal development, which is another one of the significant group work benefits.

Working in groups in the digital era

Nowadays there are different software programs that allow students to gather remotely in order to discuss and to get the assignments done. Apps such as Google Meet and Zoom were the main hosts of students’ discussions.

Being able to get things done online from your home managed to change the scenario and people’s practices. Thanks to this mutation, students have been able to participate in group discussions and projects from their own desks with their computers or phones. In consequence, problems and inconveniences like the distance and schedules differences were finally solved.

Moreover, numerous educational institutions are keen on giving online classes to students, utilizing the software pieces mentioned above. Nevertheless, properly emulating the physical classroom has been quite challenging, and separating the students in different spaces for group work was even more difficult.

How WorkAdventure supports group work

Workadventure decided to take its chances by developing a software capable of transforming the physical classroom into a virtual version of itself where teachers and students can move, interact and pay attention. Furthermore, working in groups digitally is no longer a difficult and unintuitive task because the students can freely interact between them just by approaching each other with their avatars (WOKA) or by going into a meeting room. 

To summarize: Group work has numerous benefits that can help students to improve their performance and productivity. Thanks to teamwork, the members of a group can manage more information, outperform the best individuals, take calculated risks, suggest innovative solutions, compare new perspectives from diverse backgrounds, and achieve personal growth and satisfaction.