Are group work necessary?

Group work is one of the many annoying things that you will need to do in your school career. But fear not, this group work could be the best thing that you could do for yourself and your team members.

Group work is used for all means of learning in most educational systems, this group work can help the user and their team in many ways such as, better brainstorming, cooperative team work, better social skills and more. In a test, it was found that 97% responded that working in a group improved learning, academic knowledge and learned more or different things when in that said group then if they would worked alone (Linköping, 2014, pg6).

For groups there are two types of teams; High-performance Teams or Low-Performance Teams.
The High Performance Teams is a group of people who are working toward a common goal, a common purpose and an approach for which they hold themselves collectively responsible.
A Low-Performance Teams are the people who risk of "Social Loafing".
Social Loafing occurs when you have many team members and others can hide under the performance of others and therefore do less work.

As President FDR(2014) has said, 'People acting together as a group can accomplish things that no individual acting alone could ever hope to bring about'. (I Hate Working In Groups, 2014)
With this said, working in a group is something where your team could create something that you could never imagined making. But this can only happen in a "high-performance team" because all members are in for the same purpose and same goal to achieve; and if that team has "Slackers" then the team wouldn't be achieving their best efforts.




References: 
I hate working in groups, 2014 (video file), Available from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYscemhnf88>. [13 May 2015].

Hammar Chiriac, E, Williams, GJ, & Senior, C 2014, 'Group work as an incentive for learning -- students' experiences of group work', Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 5, pp. 1-10. Available from: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00558. [13 May 2015].

How to Create a High Performing Team. 2015. How to Create a High Performing Team. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.centerod.com/developing-high-performance-teams/. [Accessed 13 May 2015].