In the last block, for one of my units, I had to divide the class into groups for their assignment. After a couple of weeks, once I got to know the students and their skills, I made the groups in a way I believed was balanced. For the most part, the groups worked, with some small issues in a few groups, but all of them delivered a well-produced piece of music.
For this new block, one of the units I’m leading also has a unit-long group project, so I wanted to approach the group-making process a little bit differently. First, I wanted to include the students in the process. Second, I wanted students to feel more comfortable in their groups in regard to the role they want to take part in and the style of music they will be producing.
I had some ideas on how to do this; I wanted to make this as fair as possible for everyone in the class. Obviously, some smaller social groups have already been formed by the students. So I wanted the groups to be formed not only with their closest classmates but with anyone with the same goals in mind regarding the project.
The first day of class came, and I opened the discussion on how should we make the groups. A few students responded that they would like to work with someone who would like to do the same style of music and with the same production style. A few of them already knew who they wanted to work with. They knew this was coming, so they had already formed some groups. Accepting those groups would have been a bit complicated as some students would have been left out.
So we came up with the idea of writing what they wanted to do in the project on a piece of paper. What Style/Genre do they want to produce if they want to go more into Acoustic or Electronic production, and if they know what role they want to take part in the group, as co-producer, engineer, composer, etc. And to write their names on the back. There was a problem; there were around 8 students that did not show up to class that day. So we would have to take them into consideration somehow.
Once we had the pieces of paper, I created the groups according to their affinity. Now, as you may see in the picture, it is evident that some students wrote exactly the same to be included in the same group, making the groups exactly as they wanted. But, in my favour, the students that did not have a group were included in teams where they would fit in just fine.
Afterwards, we included the absent students in some groups and formed new ones with the rest of them according to their interest in music and past projects. In the end, everyone present was happy and comfortable with their group, but I don’t know about the absent students; we might have to accommodate some groups next week.