Whether it is in school or out in the real world for your job, it is very likely that you will get assigned to groups to work on a certain project. Being assigned to work in groups causes many people to cringe just at the thought. We all have been in the situation where we had to work in groups and someone did not do their job, they did not pull their weight causing the other members to have to work extra time to get the work done. As established in the previous chapters this is commonly known as social loafing. It is when a person puts less effort into their work because there is a group of others and they believe that the slack will be picked up by another person in the group. The bigger the group the more likely it is
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Students should be taught at a young age several techniques that help them manage groups. Some topics that can be taught about are issues like, How to divide up the work, how to set what the group norms should be, and how to conduct group business (Aggarwal & O’Brien 2008). Why or how would this help reduce social loafing in classrooms? If students are taught these techniques at a young age they will be more prepared for group work. Students will know exactly what to expect from the group and what they will be expected to do for the group and there will be no unclear idea on what is …show more content…
If we translated this to classrooms if students think that their performance will be individually evaluated by the instructor or their group members or classmates the chance of them putting less effort into their work will increase. The bigger the group the more chances of social loafing occurring to control this instructors should keep the groups at a smaller size. If the members of the group feel that their contributions to the project are important to the project they will more likely work at full potential (Harkins, Latane, & Williams 1979). These are all ways in which the risk of social loafing will be reduced. In conclusion the best ways to fixing social loafing in classrooms is by preparing students at a young age how to work in groups and how to work with other students who might have a different work style then themselves. Having instructors take the time to allow students to get to know their group members before throwing them in to get graded on a project will help too. Students have to feel like what they are doing is
Students should be taught at a young age several techniques that help them manage groups. Some topics that can be taught about are issues like, How to divide up the work, how to set what the group norms should be, and how to conduct group business (Aggarwal & O’Brien 2008). Why or how would this help reduce social loafing in classrooms? If students are taught these techniques at a young age they will be more prepared for group work. Students will know exactly what to expect from the group and what they will be expected to do for the group and there will be no unclear idea on what is …show more content…
If we translated this to classrooms if students think that their performance will be individually evaluated by the instructor or their group members or classmates the chance of them putting less effort into their work will increase. The bigger the group the more chances of social loafing occurring to control this instructors should keep the groups at a smaller size. If the members of the group feel that their contributions to the project are important to the project they will more likely work at full potential (Harkins, Latane, & Williams 1979). These are all ways in which the risk of social loafing will be reduced. In conclusion the best ways to fixing social loafing in classrooms is by preparing students at a young age how to work in groups and how to work with other students who might have a different work style then themselves. Having instructors take the time to allow students to get to know their group members before throwing them in to get graded on a project will help too. Students have to feel like what they are doing is