Aligning an initial approach with classmates’ ideas for shared planning

Manal Raoui  |  manalraoui.com

The strategy involves forming an initial view of how to move from the shared goal to the required result, then making that view available for discussion. The student compares anticipated steps with classmates' proposals, examines differences against task demands, and revises their thinking when a more suitable approach emerges. In doing so, they contribute to a shared plan.

The learner's initial proposal is a contribution to planning, rather than the final group plan. Discussion may reveal unnecessary steps, dependencies another member noticed, or a sequence better suited to the time and resources available. “Aligning an initial approach with classmates’ ideas for shared planning” is our classroom formulation of this regulatory process, rather than the exact label used in the studies.

It fits the distinction between regulating one's own contribution, regulation supported by others, and regulation shared at group level. Students can organize their own thinking and make it visible in interaction. A shared approach can then emerge through negotiation among members' contributions.

Why the strategy matters

Understanding the task and agreeing on a goal do not automatically establish how to reach it. Members may agree on the requirements while disagreeing about where to start, the sequence of steps, or which activities can proceed in parallel.

Planning matters particularly in group work because decisions are interdependent. One member may need information held by another. Some work must precede other work. Contributions may be difficult to combine without agreement on how to organize them.

Hadwin, Bakhtiar, and Miller (2018) provide evidence for making planning perceptions visible and comparable. Their study involved 180 undergraduates in 46 groups. Participants without access to representations of classmates’ planning ideas reported more planning difficulties, which were also associated with difficulties carrying out the task, checking progress, and working as a group. Those able to see members' perceptions reported greater success with strategies used to address planning challenges.

These findings do not mean that visibility alone guarantees effective planning. They illustrate what groups lose when ideas about how to work remain unexpressed: opportunities to identify and address differences.

For the individual, the strategy encourages thinking before execution: What work will be needed? In what order? What does each step depend on? For the group, it makes that thinking available for comparison and coordination. Shared planning needs members' ideas as material to examine and revise.

Forming an initial view of the work

The strategy begins once the requirements and shared goal are clear. The student considers the steps needed to move from that goal to the required result.

Their proposal may draw on the task, prior experience, or available resources. The important element is the relationship between steps: What must come first? What depends on an earlier result? What could proceed in parallel? When do members need to come together before continuing?

The student then checks the proposal against the goal, time, and resources. If a final presentation depends on analysis that has not been carried out, preparing the finished presentation first may prevent the task from being completed as required.

Comparing proposals and revising the plan

The student makes their thinking available as a proposal for examination: “I think we need to analyze these data before preparing the presentation, because our explanation will depend on them.”

They also listen to classmates' proposals. Another member may identify parallel work, a missing step, or a time constraint. The student compares proposals to determine which organization best serves the task.

The central adjustment occurs when comparison reveals information, a dependency, or a constraint the learner had not considered. They revise their initial view and contribute that revised thinking to the shared plan.

This is consistent with Malmberg and colleagues' findings (2017). Planning appeared through overlapping forms of self-regulation, co-regulation, and socially shared regulation. Group regulatory processes were connected with individual contributions and interaction. Planning and monitoring were also related over time to what happened during execution, rather than confined to a preliminary phase.

The student anticipates steps, examines their order and connections, compares the proposal with classmates' ideas, revises it to help establish a common approach, and returns to help adjust that approach when needed.

This is cyclical. Monitoring during execution may reveal a need to revisit planning. Järvelä and colleagues (2019) likewise emphasize cycles of planning, execution, monitoring, and adaptation in response to what the work reveals.

Developing a plan rather than collecting suggestions

A group may place members' suggestions in a list and distribute them without considering how the activities connect to the goal. Collecting proposals does not establish a coherent approach.

Alternatively, one member may supply a complete plan that everyone accepts. This can get the work started without members having examined the plan or contributed to the reasoning behind its sequence. Accepting a ready-made plan differs from comparing and refining proposals.

Kielstra and colleagues (2022) distinguish low-level planning that merely names an approach from deep-level planning that connects the choice to task and content characteristics. This distinction helps identify what matters in a student's contribution: examining why a proposed step is appropriate and how it fits the rest of the work.

Allocating responsibilities answers “Who will do what?” Planning addresses the broader question “How should the work be organized to reach the goal?” Responsibilities can be allocated once activities and their relationships are established, but that allocation does not replace the planning itself.

A workable initial plan is sufficient. Students do not need a detailed prediction of everything that will happen.

Why students may need support

A group may move directly from understanding the requirements into execution. One member prepares slides, another gathers information, and a third starts something else. Duplicate work, missing steps, or incompatible contributions emerge later.

Members may have understood the task. What is missing may be discussion and coordination of their individual ideas about how to complete it.

Kielstra and colleagues (2022) identify a further limitation. Secondary students used a script to guide discussion of the task and strategy, yet most metacognitive contributions remained at a low level, with limited deep co-construction. Individual representations of some tasks and subsequent strategy reflection improved after the intervention, but reading strategy selection did not improve significantly.

Providing planning questions or boxes to complete therefore does not ensure that students learn to refine their thinking together. The intended process involves each member considering an approach, explaining the reasoning, and treating different proposals as material for examination and revision.

What teachers can do

“Plan before you begin” can easily become a quick allocation of roles or a list of general steps. Support begins with thinking through the work. Once the shared goal is clear, ask, “What activities do we need to reach this goal?”

Then direct attention to dependencies: “What must come before what, and why? Does any activity depend on another's result? What can happen in parallel?”

When proposals differ, the teacher can help students examine the difference: “Why should this step come first? What would happen if you started with the other one?” Students then explain their reasoning, consider classmates' reasoning, and revise their proposal when warranted.

This fits a design principle discussed by Järvelä and colleagues (2019): helping learners become more aware of their own and others' perceptions and making individual and group processes visible for interaction.

During execution, the teacher need not return the group to planning constantly. Intervention may be useful when work stops for missing information, members produce contributions that are difficult to integrate, or time runs short while a crucial step remains.

Rather than supplying the adjustment, reactivate the process: “What has the work revealed? Is the plan still suitable? What needs to change?”

With experience, these external questions can decrease as students become more able to explain and examine their proposals without waiting for the teacher to lead each planning discussion.

The strategy in practice

A group must prepare a presentation explaining the causes and consequences of an environmental phenomenon using documents and data. Members understand the required content. One proposes starting the slides, another wants to find pictures, and a third suggests dividing the documents. These are work proposals, but they do not yet form a shared plan.

One student considers the relationship between the goal and these activities. They anticipate extracting causes and consequences from the documents, organizing the relationships, and then building a presentation around the explanation.

They offer this for discussion: “I think we need to analyze the documents first. We won't know what belongs in the presentation until we've identified the causes and consequences.”

A classmate suggests dividing the documents to save time, but says everyone should compare findings before preparing slides. The first student revises the proposal: some analysis can happen in parallel, followed by a point at which findings are integrated. Another member notices that a diagram needs joint interpretation, so this step is added.

The resulting plan identifies the main activities, the order of dependent steps, and what can happen in parallel. Responsibilities and time estimates can follow.

During analysis, a document may fail to support the explanation members anticipated. The work has supplied new information that may require revisiting the plan.

Such returns during execution are consistent with Sobocinski and colleagues' findings (2022) in secondary school physics groups. Most observed instances of small-scale adaptation involved transitions from task execution back to task definition or understanding, and sometimes to renewed planning.

The student's strategy consisted of forming and examining an initial proposal, making it comparable with others' proposals, and revising it to contribute to a shared approach and its subsequent adjustment.

The visual aid “How will we complete the task?” makes the agreed approach visible and available for reference: What will we produce? What are the steps? How will we organize time? Who is responsible for what?

It also reminds the group that members can agree to revise the organization when the work reveals a need. It cannot make each student automatically examine their initial proposal, compare it with others', or revise it in response to their reasons. Its function is to provide a visual reference for the plan the group constructs and revisits.

The intended learning is the student's growing ability to think through an approach, explain it, compare it with classmates' thinking, and revise it when discussion or experience reveals a more suitable way forward.

The central idea

Shared planning needs individual thinking that can become a resource for interaction. Students anticipate how to reach the goal, examine relationships between activities, and compare their proposals with classmates' views.

Refining a proposal means reorganizing one's understanding in light of information, reasons, and demands that were previously less apparent. It does not mean giving up one's view simply to follow the group. Students learn to contribute to a common approach without waiting for a ready-made plan or imposing their own. The group can then use that plan and return to it when execution reveals a need for adjustment.

References

Hadwin, A. F., Bakhtiar, A., & Miller, M. (2018). Challenges in online collaboration: Effects of scripting shared task perceptions. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 13, 301–329. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-018-9279-9

Järvelä, S., Järvenoja, H., & Malmberg, J. (2019). Capturing the dynamic and cyclical nature of regulation: Methodological progress in understanding socially shared regulation in learning. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 14, 425–441. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-019-09313-2

Kielstra, J., Molenaar, I., van Steensel, R., & Verhoeven, L. (2022). Supporting socially shared regulation during collaborative task-oriented reading. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 17, 65–105. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-022-09365-x

Malmberg, J., Järvelä, S., & Järvenoja, H. (2017). Capturing temporal and sequential patterns of self-, co-, and socially shared regulation in the context of collaborative learning. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 49, 160–174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2017.01.009

Sobocinski, M., Malmberg, J., & Järvelä, S. (2022). Exploring adaptation in socially-shared regulation of learning using video and heart rate data. Technology, Knowledge and Learning, 27, 385–404. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-021-09526-1

See it in a classroom situation: When a group struggles to get started