When Learning Using Shura Fails

As exciting as the idea might seem, the challenge of implementing it may not be so easy or free of difficulties. Probably the most important consideration is to make sure you involve only teachers and students who want to participate. Trying to do something new and different is hard enough as it is. People who do not want to work at it will find that it will not work.

Here is a list of three additional considerations.

The free rider effect. This is the case where some student team members leave the work for someone else to do. They go through the motions of acting like they are doing their part of the team’s work without actually doing much of anything.

The sucker effect. Wanting to avoid doing all the work of the team (or being a sucker as some might call it), some of the more able team members may avoid putting in the effort to work with others who might not be as capable.

The rich-get-richer effect. In this case, high ability team members may be deferred to and may take over the important leadership roles in ways that benefit them at the expense of the other team members.

There is a special danger in this last effect. In a team learning setting, the more able team member may give all the explanations of what is being learned. Since the amount of time spent explaining correlates highly with the amount learned, the more able member learns a great deal while the less able members usually struggle to learn as a captive audience.

To fix these issues, there are certain conditions that must be established that create the right environment for learning using shura to be effective.

1. Students must understand that their individual performance is linked with their team performance. Each person’s efforts must be coordinated with the efforts of others to complete a task. They share common objectives and succeed or fail as a team.

2. Students must commit to providing each other with effective help. They must provide each other with feedback to improve their subsequent performance of assigned tasks and responsibilities. And they must act in trusting and trustworthy ways.

3. Students must be willing to regularly discuss how effectively team members are working together. They must be willing to learn the social skills (listening, communicating, and resolving conflicts) as they work together.

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