Determining the effect of social loafing behaviors on the performance of individual and group members in the context of group work is considered important. The aim of this research is to examine the effect of social loafing and cyberloafing behaviors on group work. The effect of social loafing and cyberloafing on group studies was examined on the…

Collaborative learning is something that all students will employ once they finish their formal education, and while it isn't something that can be objectively tested by standardized exams, it is something that can be taught. Learning to work in groups is simultaneously a way of learning and a skill worth learning. Teachers should acknowledge that…

Social loafing in group-based projects is a common problem for college teachers. This problem has received great attention, including a Quick Fix article by Stevens (2007), whose recommendations remain useful today, particularly the mechanism for peer evaluations--a key strategy for reducing social loafing. Since the publication of Stevens's…

Social loafing research has spanned several decades and fields of study. Research has provided support for both the existence of social loafing and its antecedents within the laboratory, classroom, and work place. Studies regarding the perceptions of social loafing and its effects in the online learning environment, however, are largely…

Discussion of human performance technology (HPT) focuses on the need to consider nonhuman applications in performance. Describes two levels of human performance, at the individual and group levels; and two nonhuman levels called the core processes and the business unit, which have more procedural than human concerns. (LRW)

Reported relationships between individual characteristics and group performance have been weak, but Davis (1969) and Johnson (1970) found that a subject's stated preference for working alone or in a group was associated with differences in group performance. In the present study, preference for group or solo participation was examined in relation…

This field experiment investigated the effects of confronting people with different types and timings of descriptive feedback on their presentations of self. The experimental subjects were 28 male graduate students. The subjects made three-minute informal presentations on a personal topic and then received feedback on their individual…

Two discussion papers, commenting on the main article, are included: (1) "The Person and the Bureaucracy by R. Oliver Gibson, and (2) "Campus Strategies Extended by Goodwin Watson.

McCauley, Stitt, Woods and Lipton's finding that groups were more conservative than individuals when betting at a race track has been criticized on statistical and methodological grounds. This study evaluates their research and sustains their general results and conclusions. (Editor/RK)

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of assigning students to a version of an instructional program (cooperative learning version or individual version) that either matched or did not match their pre-assessed preferences for cooperative and individual learning. Students' preferences for cooperative and individual learning were…

Classroom interaction may be described in terms of communication events, i.e., sequences of teacher-pupil communicative behaviors separated from preceding and succeeding sequences of behaviors by natural boundaries. Communication events may be institutional (related to managing the classroom and meeting the expectations of the institution), task…

Reviews studies and journal articles to collect suggestions for increasing individual student involvement in small-group activities. Briefly addresses the lack of student productivity during these activities. Includes a descriptive table of all articles appearing in "Teaching of Psychology" between 1974 and 1995. (MJP)

A self-report inventory was compared with a situational test as a predictor of the verbal behavior of individual members of small interpersonal skills training groups. As hypothesized, the situational test was a better predictor than was the self-report inventory. A powerful social conformity effect may have operated in both the situational test…

This paper recounts observations of differences in the interactions of adult students when they are engaged in traditional worksheet tasks in contrast to small group activities and summarizes recent research on the benefits of group work in adult mathematics learning. It offers a selection of group and pair activities designed to foster…