Group engagement

Why would you want young people to work together in a group? Well, it helps develop all sorts of inter-personal skills and is often more like the team work involved in many real world workplaces. For example, it can develop the following skills:

• Leadership
• Negotiating
• Diplomacy
• Collaboration

It can also give a group of young people a shared sense of purpose and a common goal to work towards.

It is important to think about how you are going to use groups to enhance and maintain engagement within an activity. Remember the activity organiser knows the young people much better than you do and they can support you with allocating them to groups.

Watch the videos of STEM Ambassadors and teachers talking about how they engage groups.

Task

1. Identify from the video the reasons that group work might be used within a STEM activity.
2. In the comments below, add to the list of skills that group work can develop.
3. Select one skill and consider how you might use group work in your activity to develop that skill, or use group work for another purpose. Share below.