A note on group work and my expectations.

This morning I wrote a student a note about their group work, and I wanted the class to read it, because it captures my expectations of students in 111 and how group work fits into process thinking and process writing. Find the note below:

Do remember: you are in a *freshman* writing class, and you are just learning to work in groups. If you were already each a perfect group member, you wouldn't need to learn these skills. The need to learn to think objectively about one's self as a group member is one reason I create the space for it to happen in my freshman courses. In short, I am very impressed when a group has a rocky start, meets and figures out some solutions to their problems, implements these solutions, and then writes about the results. Rinse and repeat. This process of making improvements--figuring out a problem, figuring out a possible solution, implementing the solution, reviewing the solution, refining the solution based on your review, rinsing and repeating, and them moving on to the next problem which will help you improve--is what process thinking is about, that is, doing as well as you can and then getting better rather than trying to be perfect the first time around. Fail joyfully and take failure as part of the process which allows you to learn. Any time and effort you spend beating yourself up is wasted effort.

By the way, go back and reread the above and spend some time thinking about it. If you can get your head around what I am saying, then you are a lot further along toward understanding process.

--Steve