Pros & Cons of Group Study

Learning in a group is much faster and effective. Try to form a group of your classmates who have the same goals as you have and are serious about achieving it. Share your knowledge and tricks with them and benefit yourselves from the learning of your classmates. 

Some of the study techniques you can adopt in group learning are

·   Using revision cards with a partner

·  Draw a diagram, make up a spider or patterned note card(s) or construct some linear key word notes.

· Revise the card(s) for 15 or 20 minutes (at most). Re-check that you understand and can recall all of the card(s) contents.

·   Teach your partner about the topic, allowing – and encouraging – questions about the topic. When a point is unclear, stop and explain it. Work through the topic until you have both completed it to your satisfaction or have agreed to meet again to continue.

Sharing topics with a partner
You can use one of your friends to revise with, by dividing up topics, revising them individually, and then meeting to discuss them. What happened in the discussion was that fresh questions and issues arose which led to both further revision and further enquiry. It worked for both of them.

Using your partner to fire questions

Work for a set period in your work room, eg 1/2 to 1 hour. Then ask your cooperative partner to fire questions at you about the topic. It will obviously help if the partner had some knowledge about the topic or a clear indication of what to ask. However, what you are seeking from this exercise is to keep flexible and alert to surprise questions and fresh angles are a bonus from this method.

Group learning can accelerate your learning because

·  Groups not only make many more suggestions than individuals, but also are quicker to reject incorrect suggestions.

· They reject the incorrect ideas, which escape the notice of individuals, working alone.

· Since by nature people are quicker to see flaws in others, group study proves more useful than individual study.

·  Gives you a fresh point of view.

·  Remember explaining a point to someone else makes it clearer to you and at times also gives you a fresh point of view.

The disadvantages of group discussion and working in a group: 

• Discussions very easily degenerate into trivial talk and gossip. This is more likely to happen when the participants are close friends.

Caution:

• For students involved in group learning there is a word of caution also. In a group, sometimes one of the students solves a problem and the others think that they also know it without solving it. Such practice can be harmful for a serious aspirant.

• Group study does not rule out the need of individual study.

• In fact, group study is most successful when individuals come fully prepared for group discussions.

By choosing 1 or 2 persons:

1.  From a group.

2. Selected members should be as serious as you are about success in IIT/PMT

3. Subject in charge: Distribute work chapter-wise (or topic-wise) to remember in the group whilst allotting work for yourself.

4.   After you have done your individual revision, fix a day and time to revise certain chapters of the subject you are to revise in your group.

5.   An appointed person explains the topic.

6.  Any other person in the group repeats what was explained. You will discover points one tends to forget. You will benefit by the way others answer a question.

7.   Repeat all the points together as a group.

8.  Jot down the summaries of the answer separately on a small sheet of paper.

9.  Back home write out full answers according to a summary guideline made in the group discussions.
10. The member who explains a particular topic :

      •   prepares the summaries... and

      •   Xeroxes these summaries making copies for others.