group

The face of the world is changing. Back five centuries ago one person could learn over the course of their life time all of the accumulated knowledge in the world. Universities used to teach you everything. It's just not possible anymore. One person couldn't learn everything the world has to offer in a hundred lifetimes. Nowadays, the amount of information is so enormous that innovations take team efforts. The big problems facing our civilization aren't going to be solved by individuals, but by teams. To that end, I'm introducing groups into my class. Each class of ~25 will be broken up into roughly five groups of five. Groups will be responsible and graded as a team for how well they work together toward completing classroom needs. These needs include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Reporting to the wiki class notes. 2a. Completing homework sets together. 2b. Reporting to the wiki homework answers. 3. Completing wiki based multi-week projects. 4. Group reading will be a mainstay in class. 5. Groups will help each other prepare for test and graded assignments. 6. More stuff will be added as the semester goes on.

The take home point though is that an education is incomplete if it doesn't include learning to function as a member of a team. The group setting is to help students catch each other before anyone falls through the cracks and encourage excellence since there will be peer pressure to succeed. In the end though, the purpose to prepare students for what lies outside and after the walls of NHS.