Monday, April 02, 2012

Education and Collaboration

Just about everyone in education is talking about how working in groups is a 21st Century skill.  It is my contention that working in groups is a sub-optimal strategy for teaching.  I can only offer my immediate anecdotal thoughts.

If there are two students working a group, they share the benefits but not the cost.  There's a tendency for one student to do all of the work because the benefit is shared.  So one student will free ride or shirk.

I found this Harvard paper on the topic. But more on this topic will follow as I put this into a game theory context.


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