Why Stable Teams Are More Efficient in Education

It is known that study groups speed up learning. Recent studies have shown that stable study groups are more efficient than shiftingmembership groups. In this paper, we provide a theoretical explanation for this empirical observation. 1 Formulation of a Problem Group work, its success and its challenges. It is well known that study groups and group work enhance education. Of course, one needs to be cautious when using student groups. There is always a serious danger that, when the class results are largely depending on a group work, a weaker student in a team will “hide” behind his team’s success and not learn as much compared to learning strategies involving more individual responsibility. Shifting-membership groups as a way to deal with group work challenges. To deal with the above problem, practicing educators use shiftingmembership groups, in which groups are changing from one assignment to another. A recent empirical result: stable teams are more efficient. The use of shifting-membership groups raised a natural question: is there a negative side effect in their use? In other words, does the constant change in student groups affect the effectiveness of group-related education? Recent studies have shown that indeed, the use of shifting-membership groups leads to a drastic decrease in the education efficiency; see [1, 2].