[MUSIC] We do a lot of group work in physics and that's an important skill on several levels. Part of it is just the ability to work with other people but there's also the point that participating in a group is the best way of learning. It's very easy if you have three or four people solving a problem to be the one who just sits back and lets other people think about it. Maybe you'll be taking notes and thinking that you're learning but it's not the same as jumping right in and saying why don't we try this, or what happens if we do that? Yes, you will be wrong sometimes, but being wrong and learning from your mistakes, particularly in the company of your peers and other people who are learning at the same time, again, is a very good skill to have, to be able to, yes, participate in the sort of formation of knowledge, which is part of what we're trying to teach you. [MUSIC] So, in the business field, a lot of actual practice when you go and work happens in groups, right, in teams and that's one of the skills we tried to level up within the university setup. So, many of the marketing subjects for example have group work where you have to solve the problem and one of the interesting kind of anecdotal evidence that I have about group work, or what makes particular groups better than others. What I found was groups that had diverse cultures seem to perform better in coming up with the solution, only because they had to defend the position against a position that may be very far away from themselves. So by defending their position, they got to know the theory and were able to translate the theory into practice. So what I would really challenge you to do is, don't be shy of making friends, and also group work with people from different countries. [MUSIC] So again, I would suggest that having diverse opinions and debating is a friend because at the end of the day, you're trying to come up with the best and most effective solution to your problem. And I believe, debate allows you to communicate very diverse views and sometimes totally opposing views. So therefore you get a very broad understanding of all the potential solutions, and at the same time you're able to solidify your own argument, so therefore it's really critical that you allow for debate do not see debate as a constraint. [MUSIC] >> I encourage this in my classes not all lecturers do but often I tell the students, you must discuss outside of the class, you need to do things in pairs. For example, in my classes, one of the main questions is about grammar. They need to know English grammar. Now the international students often know English grammar perfectly. The background Australian language speakers often know how to use the language, but don't know what a verb is. And so I usually get them together and say, go and have a coffee. Talk about this assignment. Work it out together. Do it in groups. In other subjects, it's really important. And I give my students, I give them often skills on how to meet up with other people. I say, when you go in to a lecture look at someone you'd like to talk to. Go and sit next to them. Start chatting before the lecture. Do you know what's happening? And then at the end of it, you just have to say something like, that was really difficult. Look, I'm going for a coffee. Would you like to come with me? It's the best place and way to break the ice. And I notice that once the students have made a friend or two or three, then they start talking with them and discussing the issues. To me it's through discussion with the others that they really get to understand because you know yourself you can read an article and it's hard to remember it. If you can read an article and talk to your dog, someone in the house, even if they don't understand it, you remember it. So it's that talking with other students that's so important. [MUSIC]
