The two groups were selected because they were made up of two clearly personality types:
• Group 1 consisted of a 4 students who were all strong personality types and were high achievers. Three of the 4 students were honors students. In general when presented with a case, these students went right to work on getting it done (the “doers”).
• Group 2 consisted of 3 students who individually were less comfortable overall and from the start of the class, always looked to the instructor for explicit directions. When given a new case, these students without a fail asked for clarification on exactly what they were supposed to do (the “askers), versus at least reading through the case once and trying to think through it.
At the beginning of the work period, each group was required to select a “writer” who was responsible for recording the group’s official solutions. Preliminary analysis revealed a number of apparent differences in the operation of these groups, especially as it relates to the group’s success at problem-solving.
Question Asking & Group Organization
There was a marked difference in the type and number of questions that the doers asked compared to the askers. Particularly in the earlier tapings, the askers tended to almost begin the case with a sense of panic—“What are we supposed to be doing?”—while the doers approached the case more directly—Okay, what information do we have, and what are we trying to do?” From the first, the doers group started a case by having each member read the case, and then discussing what each person understood before brainstorming their options for addressing the problem.
This was very different from the askers group, where in the first case the students all simply sat around saying “do you know what to do? What chapter is this on?” It was also not clear from the tape whether each member had in fact read the entire case nor understood. In one doers tape, it appeared that two of the three members started looking through their notes before even reading through the case or coming to some understanding of what was expected of them.Once the doers had agreed on a plan, they then spoke to each other as they worked through analyses options. As the semester progressed, the askers group also became a little more organized but never quite achieved the fluidity of the doers group. I believe that this overall lack of organization and consensus often led to the askers group being less successful not only in terms of not completing cases, but also in terms of thinking through the statistical concepts.
There was also a difference noted in the behavior of the writers for the two groups, and in the behavior of the groups themselves. In the doers group, each member had their individual papers on which they worked, while in the askers group, only the writer ever wrote on a paper separate from the assignment sheet.
The writer for the doers group worked through the problem with everyone, but only wrote on the group paper when the group was satisfied with the direction or conclusion. After writing each section, the writer would read the recorded response out-loud and the group would either agree with the statements as written, or offer changes for clarification. They would not proceed to a new question or portion of the case until they, as a group, were satisfied with the write-up for the previous section. The writer for the askers group however, tended to write as the group thought through the problems and there was also some arbitrary division of labor where one student would flip through their notes constantly while the other appeared to simply be trying things out on his calculator. The asker writer during this time simply sat and waited. As a result, the group write-ups for the asker groups were disorganized and often incomplete.
In one instance that was not video-taped, each of the groups came to my office and sat with me as I read and graded their case write-up. At numerous instances during the read-through, I would question the askers group about what was written and the “leader” would often be able to correctly explain their technique, but it was often not consistent with what was written on the paper. This would then lead to the writer apologizing because he/she didn’t understand what they were supposed to write. Even after addressing the need for the group to work as a unit, the group never quite corrected itself.
A lot of the confusion that appears on the tape for the askers group was noted by the instructor during the classes. As I walked around to the groups asking leading questions or for clarifications, the askers would tend to simply say “I don’t know” to any question that I ask, or “We’re confused—we don’t remember doing this before”. As the semester progressed, one member of the three-person group did evolve into a “leader” role where he would often figure things out by himself and then explain it to the others. The other two members genuinely didn’t appear capable of independent thought and were quickly overwhelmed as the case materials became more extensive. Any questioned member of the doers group could often explain the logic behind their case and analysis strategy.
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