Conditions for Successful Group Work

37 Figure 7. The Percentage of Students’ Perceptions toward ‘Conditions for Successful Group Work’ As indicated by Figure 7, more than half of the students 55.8 either „disagreed‟ 35 or „strongly disagreed‟ 20.8 with the idea that the teacher should be the one who determined the members of each group Question 17. In other words, they explicitly expressed that they favored working with friends whom they could choose by themselves than with the ones chosen by the teacher. Although there were no explicitly stated comments from the students in this study, the reason behind this students‟ preference might be similar with Oakley et al.‟s 2004 prediction, revealing that smarter students naturally tend to choose only clever partners and leave the less competence students to form their own groups. That is to say, some students, especially the more capable ones, just want to ease the process of doing team-work tasks by working with 38 certain skilled friends they can choose by their own. Regarding of this, however, there were still quite a lot of students 44.1 who also supported 35.8 or even strongly supported 8.3 the idea of having the teacher as the group picker. Yet, surprisingly, the following data Question 18 show a contrasting result with the previous prediction of Oakley et al. 2004, revealing that a great number of students 78.2 actually strongly sided 20.2 or sided 58 with the idea to work with friends whose competence levels were different from them. Thus, perhaps it was only a reason of „friendship‟ or another social factor which mattered the most to the majority of the students who preferred to have self-selected groups to teacher-selected ones Question 17. Apart from this, in contrast, a smaller number of students 21.9 still expressed their objection 18.5 and strong objection 3.4 related to this idea, proving a fact that the minority of the students preferred working with partners who had a similar competency level to the ones who did not. The next item discusses about whether or not a peer assessment was needed to make the final grades became fairer for every individual Question 19. Based on Figure 6, a higher number of students 61.6 either strongly accepted 13.3 or accepted 48.3 the idea that a peer assessment was important to be attached in every work done in groups. This high percentage of the need of a peer assessment was somewhat incompatible with the result of Question 16 before, revealing that a bigger share of them 68.3 did not hate the fact when the teachers gave equal grades to each member. To be precise, logically, if a greater number of students could accept the condition of getting the 39 same marks Question 16, there should not be a peer assessment needed to spot on the different contribution that every individual made in their group. This condition could be understood that there were 6.7 of the students who showed a sort of mixed feelings in filling in the questionnaire. Regardless of this, on the other hand, the rest of the students 38.3 significantly either „disagreed‟ 28.3 or „strongly disagreed‟ 10 that a peer assessment was needed to make the marks more transparent among individuals. The subsequent data explores about the idea of the best time to do group work Question 20. The finding shows that a large number of students 82.5 either „strongly agreed‟ 34.2 or „agreed‟ 48.3 that group work was more effective to be done in class or during the school hours rather than outside the school hours. This dominant response is perhaps based on the view that scheduling a time to meet is another difficult task to do Greenbank, 2007. Therefore, it is no wonder that a bigger share of the students insisted to finish the task in class. Nonetheless, there are still a few students 17.5 who either „disagreed‟ 15 or „strongly disagreed‟ 2.5 with such idea. Strictly speaking, this small number of students liked working outside the school hours over working during the class session. Such response can also be understood since there are also types of students who cannot concentrate if the atmosphere of the class is too crowded or unpleasant Greenbank, 2007. Next, the students‟ opinion about whether or not they needed special instructions from the teacher to form an effective working group is revealed through Question 21. The finding shows that a very high number of students 90.8 either „strongly agreed‟ 30 40 or „agreed‟ 60.8 that teachers needed to familiarize steps or tips to make the groups‟ performance even more successful. This kind of concern has also been considered by Bolton 1999 who once figured out that students often feel frustrated with their group experiences due to “the absence of structured support, concrete guidance, and visible coaching” p. 235 from the teachers. In addition, this condition became even more tragic when Bolton discovered that a potentially brilliant group failed to undergo a pleasant process in working with peers due to the zero knowledge of how to be an effective group. T his description from Bolton might somewhat represent the students‟ reason behind the high degree of agreement towards this item. Furthermore, since the last item Question 22 allowed the students to choose one option in connection with the ideal number of people in a group, a special chart Figure 8 is presented: Figure 8. The details of Students’ Responses from ‘Question 22’ 17 50 25 2 1 1 4 The Ideal Number of People in A Group 2 - 3 persons 3 - 4 persons 4 - 5 persons 5-6 persons 6 persons 6 - 7 persons 10 persons 41 The data in Figure 8 above demonstrate that the first category receiving the highest responses from the students 50 is 3-4 persons in a group, followed by 4-5 persons 25, 10 persons 4, 5-6 persons 2, 6-7 persons 1, and 6 persons 1, respectively. Based on this finding, the ideal numbers of people in a group generally approved by the majority of the students were 3-4 and 4-5 persons. This idea is in line with the study of Oakley et al. 2004 who suggested that 3 to 5 persons are the ideal size of an effective working group since if there are beyond 5 members in a group, they believed that there will be at least a member who does not actively participate in finishing the task. However, it should also be noted that their suggestion is for regular assignments given in class, not a type of projects which usually need more members in a group.

E. CONCLUSION

This research was aimed to investigate Satya Wacana Senior High School students‟ perceptions toward the advantages and disadvantages of group work in relation to the social, academic, and fairness aspects; along with how several factors affected the way they perceived group work as either encouraging or discouraging. In terms of the social aspect, the findings showed that students tended to support that group work could teach them to respect others‟ opinions, get to know friends better, improve communication skills, and also develop leadership skills. In addition, they also tended to affirm that they did not feel neglected by dominant members in the group. 42 Furthermore, although somewhat divided, 54.6 of them expressed that they could still tolerate different working styles among members. There was only one disadvantage of group work that a large part of students deemed as true, i.e. too much time was wasted to talk than to work. In the academic aspect, all the questionnaire items tended to receive support from the majority of the students. In other words, in general, they agreed that group work enabled them to be both a better problem solver and critical thinker, use English better, have more motivation to learn English, and understand the lessons more easily. Besides, although almost fairly divided, 56.3 of them agreed that they could memorize the lessons longer when they worked in a group than when they studied by themselves. Meanwhile, under the fairness aspect, two disadvantages of group work were revealed. The first concerned about the presence of freeriders. Whereas the second, although somewhat divided, revealed that 57.7 of the students justified that their workload was often unfair. Aside of this, however, more than half of them expressed that they could tolerate the condition when teachers gave all the members the same final marks, despite the unfair share of the workload. With regard to the criteria of a successful group work, according to most of them, consisted of 3 to 4 self-selected friends with different competency levels, who worked during school hours, that worked best when the teacher guided them, and when there was a peer assessment to control their performance. From this part, interestingly, the need to have a peer assessment, which gained 61.6 of agreement, somewhat contradicted to 43 their statement that they were not bothered if all members were given the same marks, which was indicated by 68.3 of the responses. This result could be understood by inferring that there were a few students having a sort of mixed feelings in filling in the questionnaires. Regardless of the discussed findings which already met the aim of the study, there were also some limitations in the present study. The first limitation concerns the correlation of female and male students, or even the length of experiencing group work, to their perceptions toward group work. Perhaps, there will be new findings revealed if further studies correlate the influences of students‟ gender or the length of experiencing group work to the way they perceive certain items in the questionnaires. The second limitation concerns the grade of the students, and also the setting of the study. Different results may have been acquired if the participants of the study had been other graders in the school, or the twelfth graders in others secondary schools. Thereby, further research is essential to figure out whether students‟ perceptions differ if the context is changed. The implication of the study is that the secondary teachers need to consider their students‟ perceptions into account when teachers want to assign some team-work tasks. Most importantly, teachers should be willing to teach their students how to manage an effective working team. Therefore, students can really know and even get the real benefits of group work if they do it correctly.