Small group work/id

13. Bekerja dalam kelompok kecil

Pekerjaan kelompok kecil merupakan komponen yang sangat penting dalam setiap program pelatihan. Inilah salah satu cara terbaik untuk mendorong keterlibatan dan partisipasi.

Kelompok kecil

• memberi peluang bagi lebih banyak orang untuk memperoleh “waktu tampil” lebih banyak agar dapat menyampaikan pendapat, menambahkan gagasan, dan bertanya.
• memungkinkan individu untuk menerima masukan lebih cepat.
• memungkinkan peserta untuk belajar dari satu sama lain.
• menciptakan peluang bagi lebih banyak orang untuk mempraktikkan keterampilan atau menerapkan pengetahuan pada waktu bersamaan.
• menjadikan pembelajaran lebih dinamis dan aktif.
• mendorong peserta agar lebih saling mengenal, sehingga mencairkan hambatan komunikasi dan menciptakan suasana pembelajaran yang lebih positif.

As a facilitator you will want to think about the activity you have planned and if it is going to be important to manipulate the composition of the groups. For example, you may think that the participant’s should mix more and NOT be always with the same colleagues. You may think that a better discussion will come from mixing certain personalities more carefully. You may believe that the less experienced participants will learn more if they are encouraged to mix more with others who have more to share. The thought you put into this question can have a very significant impact on the outcome of the exercise, how fruitful it is to all participants and how rich the discussion or resulting work produced is.

Key points about creating small groups

Some activities dictate the number of people you need in each group and it doesn’t matter how many groups you have

• for example, a role-play activity which requires two people and an observer must have at least 3 people

Some activities dictate the number of groups you need but it doesn’t matter how many people are in each group

• for example, a topic has five key areas which need discussion and investigation so you would want to create five groups of approximately equal size.

Ways to create small groups

Sometimes you will let people decide which group they want to go. They may choose their group for any number of reasons. Their choice may be based on

• their interests or expertise
• their friends’ or close colleagues’ choice
• where they are sitting and which group is easiest to move to
• who else is in the group
• how ‘easy’ they think the group’s task is.

At other times you will want to influence the mix within a group. There are many ways to do this depending on what mix you want to achieve, or the mood of the activity or indeed atmosphere within the whole group.

You could, for example;

• Assign a number, colour, word such as 1, 2, or 3, green, red or blue or cat, dog, rabbit to each participant and then get them to regroup in the room according to this number or name. This way is likely to form groups with a good mix of participants.
• Get people to arrange themselves according to which years they were born in 50s, 60s, 70s etc. This will greatly influence the average age of each group and will produce a particularly interesting outcome for a specific purpose. You might want to do this if, say, your activity was examining change over time perhaps.

Whatever method you use make sure that it

• Serves a good purpose and is appropriate for the group
• Doesn’t create confusion or chaos
• Doesn’t waste time
• Adds to the activity as a whole, never detracts from its purpose.