Types of Group Based on their Effectiveness

A person can understand and develop himself or herself by understanding all of

the perspectives of human includes their capability and ability, factors that influence
them and their personality type. Furthermore, those cognitions can help a person in
building a harmonic and effective relationship between individuals. Because, a person
actually also has a role as a social person, instead of being an individual. As a social
person, a person naturally needs someone in their life to help them. In a group, the
individuals will interact with each other. By interacting one and another, rules and norms
will emerge which rule the group.

Based on the effectiveness, there are four types of group; Pseudo group,
traditional group, effective group, and high-performance group. These groups have their
own strengths and weaknesses.

A pseudo group is an individualist group where students are assigned to work

together but they have no interest to do it. They assume they will be ranked from the
highest to the lowest performer. However, they are actually competing for each other.
They see each other as opponents who must be defeated, attempt to delude and
confuse each other, hide information from each other, and distrust each other. Students
would achieve more if they work alone.1

Meanwhile, the traditional group is a group where they get a task to be done
together. They realize to do it. But, the members of this group believe that they are
scored individually instead of being as one group. Therefore, the task is done
individually, yet they don’t consider the value of togetherness and group-working. In
other words, they are trying to get information from the other members. But, they don’t
want to share the information that they have got to other members instead. The
traditional group does the task individually, not as a team. Moreover, some of the

1
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3622307_Cooperative_Learning_Effective_Teamwork_
for_Engineering_Classrooms [accessed Oct 16 2018].
members become lazy and hand over their responsibility to the member who is more
responsible and ambitious.

This phase causes the more responsible member felt exploited, so the member
does the task less. As a result, the other group members do their task better than this
‘more responsible’ member. The task will be done better if they work individually rather
than work as a group. In our daily life, we can see this type of group in classes where
the teacher or lecturer divides the group instead of the students themselves.

Likewise, an effective group is where the students are assigned to work together
they know that their success depends on all of the group members. The formation of the
group is clearly defined. First of all, the group motivates itself by explaining its purpose.
Second, group members hold themselves and each other accountable for doing perfect
work to achieve their goals. Third, group members work face-to-face and they do real
work together. Students support each other to thrive through helping, assisting,
explaining, sharing, and encouraging. Fourth, group members teach each other and
build teamwork skills to achieve their goals. Also, the members share responsibility for
emphasizing leadership. Finally, groups evaluate how effectively they are achieving
their goals and how well they work together.

Last, is the high-performance group. This is a group that completes all the criteria
for being a cooperative learning group. What differs the high-performance group from
the cooperative learning group is the level of commitment members have. Members'
mutual concern for each other's personal growth enables high-performance cooperative
groups to perform far above expectations, and also to have lots of fun. Unfortunately,
this group is rare. Most groups never achieve this level of development.