I think, in the case of distribution with good students better than if kept together.

I will choose mixing different types of students together. Isolating passive students together will deteriorate their abilities and let them become more passive.

Which is better, to group passive students together or include them within active students groups?

Depending on the objective of school - e.g. if the objective is to improve passive students' performance, they should be included within the active student groups with closer monitoring & intervention by the teacher as appropriate (this can cause more workload to the teacher).  If the objective is not to slow down the active students' learning, finishing the syllabus on time or for the ease of teaching by the teacher etc., perhaps it is feasible to group passive students together.  Personally I saw these 2 methods being used in different schools or these 2 methods being flip-flop in the same school.

Dear all, Thank you for your contributions, I really appreciate them.

@Han Ping, the objective is to help enhance the performance of passive students. 

I agree with your opinions.. 

Hopefully we get more opinions from other colleagues to enrich the topic with their own experiences. 

Desr Zainab, in my opinion it is better to include the passive students in active students groups to improve their performance.

Grouping may not help; mixing them together will be a better option so that they can learn from their peers.

Grouping may not help; mixing them together will be a better option so that they can learn from their peers.

Dear Ms. Auda,

My experience might be a bit different. I'd rather put passive students together. First, as they seem to have similar personality, I assume they share some qualities of introverted people. There's a better chance that they may get along well, and help each other out--work in their own introvert styles to be productive and achieve the goals.

Second, I think passive students may work better in their own group than being around extroverts as they may get dominated and outshone by those expressive people. Being with extroverts, they may become even more silent, and in some cases, their self-esteem may also be affected. 

Well, just one opinion I'd like to share.

Sincerely,

Cameen

Salam Ms. Zainab,

I have experimented 3 times before this whereby I had grouped them with their own kind. Then, I asked them to compete with the other 5 groups in task based activities. You can never expect the result!

I found that they could be as good as the rest, if you put them in a very competitive situation provided that they have been well-briefed on the requirements/tasks. Of course, we could not compare apple to apple, but they are only slightly lower than the rest and the gap is still manageable!!

It totally depends on how best they could perceive the task. I hope this will help you.

TQ.

The ultimate aim of grouping students is to mix their abilities such that they enhance each others learning. So if passive learners are kept in isolation they will not learn and develop from active students.

from teaching experience and theory of education, you need to think of different stratgies trying to encourage the passive student and motivate them in different ways including mix them with active students. However sometimes this can be seen by the passive students as a threat and also in many cases they hide themselves behind the active once who usually are more lively. so you need to strike a balance and be careful with the kind of groups you're including them with. You need to include them with active but compassionate and not dominating students. Also, some passive student they seem to have learning difficulties that doesn't mean they're not bright, but they might be slow learners or they learn in different ways not the classic methods of theaching which also as a teacher you need to be aware of. Using different teaching strategies cas assist those student.

Zainad, I'm very proud of you to ask such good questions and willing to learn and try different learning methods.

good luck

Dr. Nadia

Thank you very much all colleagues, your contributions have just raised a good topic of research. I was thinking of the challenge passive students might have when gathered together, because after all they have to show a better performance when being compared to the other groups. That may raise their enthusiasm inside class more and make them lose the opportunity of "hiding' among active students whose presence is always a guarantee for a 'a run way'! 

Thank you @Dr. Nadia for your encouragement, happy to find you answering my queries. 

Dear Zainab 

I think it is better to keep both together and gently try to involve the passive students.

Many years back I had a student who had come from a small village to study. She was shy, passive and tongue tied. So just to encouraged her I asked her questions, giving her work to do. She in due course became an active student of the class. Today she is a college teacher herself.

Regards

Vibha 

Interesting! Indeed all what our students need is raising their self-confidence though repeatedly encouragement and giving 'a blind eye' to their main drawbacks (at least in the beginning of the course). That's specially effective in language learning. 

 According to my experience in teaching, I think the 'passive' student type is determining the teaching style. Some type will be better enhanced if I list him in a group of other passive students.

Dear Dr. Zainab

It is really an interesting issue which deserve appreciation.

Adding passive students into more active group may be work as a hiding background to the former as you mentioned previously. However, this plan could also provide an incentive for them to show their capabilities against more active counterparts. Some instructors think about a kind of sparking action which could start the changing cascade. From more than 25 years in the profession of university education, I prefer the second opinion without ignoring the crucial role of educator himself in monitoring and encouraging passive students by allocate more attention and effort toward them.

With my best wishes

When I was quite new to teaching I was asked to cover a group of academically challenged students for a tutor on leave - they had a mix of abilities (passiveness was something I would have cherished) - I was given some advice by a colleague I have never forgotten "always teach to the lowest common denominator", which I think fits well with an earlier comment of raising students' confidence. One can use the less passive students as motivators. 

Kind regards and I am privileged to communicate with such an esteemed group of people.

Roderick          

Based on my experience of teaching in Higher Education (mostly social sciences), there is no clear-cut answer to this question. Rather, it depends on what you want to achieve for both groups of students and  - more importantly - the kind of tasks you set for them.  Also, 'passivity' and 'activity' may come in various different personal and cultural shapes and forms: 'vocal' is not the same as 'informed', 'quiet' not the same as 'dumb' or 'uninterested'. You need to determine the problem you perceive here: what do you perceive as 'passivity' and why/for whom is that a problem?

If your aim is merely to get students to talk to each other, splitting them up in pairs and giving them the task of interviewing each other on a given subject or question might help as a first step. In that kind of setting, both parties will have to speak, otherwise the situation becomes socially embarrassing.

If the problem is that they are not responding to your questions (or rather, that it is always the same students responding to your questions), groupwork with differentiated tasks might work for you. For example: after you have received the obvious answers from you regular respondents, ask groups to discuss alternative positons/interpretations/solutions (where the subject allows this) and their respective merits. Assign one of the usually more passive students the role of notetaker/rapporteur: they then have a task, they need to make sure that they follow and understand what is being discussed, but they do not (yet) have to venture their own opinion, but the results of a group discussion. This allows them to speak without too much personal involvement.

If the gap between the 'good' and the 'passive' students is large in your classes, you could try occasionally to  use groupwork to get the better students to explain something you have only hinted at to the more passive ones (you only know that you have fully grasped something when you can explain it so that others can understand). Do that too, often, though, and your brighter students might get bored, the more passive ones begin to feel patronised by their brighter peers.  To counter that, you should vary the ways you use groupwork: occasionally  mixed ability groups with similar tasks, at other times clustered groups with tasks differentiated according to ability (more challenging tasks for the more advanced learners, easier ones for the less able group), but the tasks always set in such a way that each group is stretched intellectually at least a little. When getting feedback on the results, be sure to do it in such a way that all groups can add something of value to the overall result (in other words: don't ask the group that knows everything about everything first).

If you want to build your students' confidence, show them that you value all of them.

If the problem is that you - as a teacher - find it hard to gauge how much/little of what you are saying your class is taking in, anonymous written five minute feedback at the end of a session might help you get a better measure of what is going on.

Thanks a lot , Wolfgang. I think that the first question is what means "passive students" for the teacher... 

There's then a second problem: why should we categorize "types" of students? We put in a same category some students because they behave in a way that doesn't fit to our expectations. But are they "always" passive? For the same reasons? In the same way? And the other ones, are they "never" passive?

If we talk about "passivity" instead of "passive students", it can be an interesting phenomenon to talk about with all the students, so that they can help us to help them, and they can help each other too. They are perhaps the best experts to tell us why  they are sometimes more "active", or more "passive", and what help them to be more "active" in the lesson or not. So every student can think, and then talk or write something about it. 

But if you are more precise on what you are interested in, it can be easier to get richer ideas: "passivity" is seen as "negative", and the risk would be that they feel that you are juste pointing on some behaviours, or some students, that you don't like... and that wouldn't help them to get involved in the talking, or writing. 

I take the Malcolm Knowles approach and look at the whole system in which the sum (or outcome) is larger than the individual whole. Adult learning covers students as well. The diversity is a key learning factor for the group dynamics so not only are you setting an environment for learning about a subject but also gain the ability to talk about group dynamics in a real time setting. . 

I think  you have to take all of this great advice into consideration and then experiment based on your individual context. I have been exploring this in light of the introversion-extroversion spectrum.

I am experiencing this same exact dilemma in a high school environmental science class, which I teach with a co-teacher who is a special education teacher. In a group project, we have put passive students in mixed groups hoping that we could assign them independent work that will contribute to the class. We have had mixed results, and frustration on our part. Therefore, we have decided that for the next group activity, we will group the passive kids together to see if there is a gradient of passivity. Maybe some passive kids will step up and lead their group. Then we can see how to best meet the needs of passive kids.

I think the same dilemma with different results would result if you put all of the active kids in the same group. Maybe nothing would get done, but you would be able to address the VARIETY of active students.

For me, this question belongs to two different school of thought.  One argues the learners of same ability should be grouped together for proper attention arising from their peculiar learning needs and to control for "ridder effects", while the other school believes both groups of learners should be put together as the passive are more likely to be challenged by the active ones. Each school has its merits and demerits. So, I would rather subscribe to the latter which of course typifies the situation in the society

thank you all new colleagues for enriching this thread... and special thanks for dr. Wolfgang Deicke detailed explanation. 

@Wolfgang Deicke and @Marco Allenbach, I used the term 'passive' students in my master study to refer to students who usually don't interact to class discussions (in conversation classes). Those students who used to depend on the 'active' students in whole class discussions and don't bother making more effort to enhance their performance. In an open class discussion such students will hide easily among other active ones, but when the class is divided into small groups they will be in challenge to 'do' something because 'their faces' are shown apparently! 

Dear Napoleon,

To my mind it is always better to integrate passive students with the active ones for more stimulus.

Dear Zainab Jaafar Auda,

I found that the "passive" students are most of the time those students where English is not their first language and they are not confident to give an opinion due to being afraid that other students will laugh at them. When setting a safe learning environment, they tend to participate.  This is only my opinion from direct observation and interaction with my students. The situation might be different from yours.

I agree with the majority of discussion. I do incorporate the 'passive' or quieter students in groups with more open or active students and find that it is very effective for drawing them out.

I think integrating passive and active students is a better way to improve their abilities. But, with the intergration of students, teacher should guide students to create a much productive environment. Teacher should concern about the improvement of friendship, sharing and solidarity culture in clasroom. Because, in my view, education has not only  the responsibility of improving mental ability, but also improving individual and interpersonal social abilities. 

They need to be combine so that some certain spirit could be impact upon them. This will encourage them and prepare them to become average or even above avarage Students at a future time.

Dear Zainab Jaafar Auda!

I was a secondary-school teacher for 11 years. I always experienced a heterogeneous group set-up as beneficial.

Now, I am an educational researcher. I investigate inquiry learning arrangements. Though I have no own current evidence, I still experience the collaboration of highly acitve and less acitve pupils as favorable. Less active pupils can learn from others, and active pupils can strengthen their skills by engaging and supporting others.

In the German speaking countries we are contemporary discussing the idea of "inclusive education", which favors a collaborative instruction of all individuals, indepentend of any dimension of difference (gender, language, learning abilities, attitudes, ...). Though it is still important to discuss differences within our society as well as the difficulties of an inclusive educational system, it is also important to include everybody in various learning endeavors, recognizing their demands and concerns. Hence, I think it is important to avoid separation and multiply opportunities.

And finally, let me articulate the following side-track-notion: We have to recognize, that a third of our pupils ar introverted persons. Introverts are not keen on permanent teamwork or communication. Nevertheless, this attitude does not mean that they are passive. According to Susain Cain introverts are often very creative persons. Although they seem to be passive, they have unexpeted capacities. In short, being passive or actice is not - a priori - a category of quality.

I hope my response is helpful.

Kind regards,

Johannes

I agree with the comments above re the introverted students - not all feel totally comfortable in a grouped environment which is also to say (as above) that these people are not incapable; it is just what they prefer. Also their silence might not mean that they cannot contribute, rather it might be a sign that they are either nervous about saying something in front of others, or perhaps are not feeling that they have anything worthy to say, or a combination of factors where their silence is filled by others' who want to lead / push things along in whichever direction they deem is on target and who might think that the others in the team actually want them to take that role.

One of the challenges is if you are assessing students in group or collaborative tasks. Learners may often feel they have to ride it out because it is an assessment, not because it is their preferred way of being assessed. Do you award participation . . . through your observations as the teacher, or do you invite them to self-assess, or perhaps invite the other members to assess individual's participation?

In order to get around the more capable students' comments often heard about "why should they share their solutions?", a colleague has been creating (maths) tasks in test conditions where they spend the first 15 minutes tackling 8-10 multi-choice questions, then having all their materials taken from them. They restart as a group with the same questions but this time with a scratch card where the whole team has to agree on the answer before scratching the card to reveal if the answer is correct. If not they have to re-scratch the line until they find the correct (starred) answer - but the more times they scratch the line to find the solution, the less marks they get for that response . It gives an opportunity for the best to still be the best (since everyone gets a combined personal + team score) and for the others in the group to have it explained to them by peers / or defend their options. Almost all the occasions I have seen this in action the group score is better than the individuals' scores.

Hello, all interested

I think it depends on what you intend to accomplish with the group work.

If your aim is to get the work done, or to let the more passive learners benefit from discussions by more active learners, then surely you would have more inclusive groups.

On the other hand, if you have a lot of time, and your purpose is to give more passive learners the opportunity to move into leadership positions, then a grouping of passive learners might be an option. This may not always be successful, though, and could need a lot of input and facilitation from the educator. However, the outcome might just provide unexpected results.

Regards

Karen

Dear Zainab,

Separating the passive students from the active one will not help these students. Keep them together and let them learn together is the best way. You can try and read some articles and the research work of Prof. Mazur of the Harvard University on peer instruction. These students have many things to benefit when kept together: collaboration, articulation and much more. The research study I just concluded shows that passive students do gain much through their interaction with the active ones. A student said before the study he had a problem in speaking publicly to defend his opinion about physics, but after the eight weeks of the study, he can now talk anywhere to defend his opinion. Besides, Constructive Controversy Theory demands that student can speak out his or her mind through a logical argument. Therefore, passive students will never be able to put forward any logical argument if they remain all alone without mixing with the active ones during learning.

As a former teacher k-12 and higher education, I always used mixed ability grouping.  Students should have opportunities to learn from their peers.  Groups do not have to be fixed, you can have rotating groups this would allow the passive student is more verbal in homogeneous groups where they might not in more active groups.

I think that both strategies can work out well but that will depend on the objectives of the teacher. There are times when a teacher might want to apply the diversify responsive teaching approach in order to provide particular assistance to particular group of learners. To achieve this objective, the best approach will be to group the learners according to their performance levels. so as to provide interventions or assistance based on the levels/strengths of the learners (we dont want to have some learners in the group getting bored because others are dragging them behind, likewise we dont want others to feel left behind because other are fast). In other instances where the teacher intends to motivate the introverts learners and also achieve some of the benefits of corporative learning, then, the blend of learners at different levels will be the best strategy. However, i am of the opinion that a teacher should try to apply both at intervals because they can both work wonders in different situations

Hello there,

Making groups of the students has always been a confusing part.

I would go for mixing the students for their own benefit. However, due care should be taken to evaluate individual student on his/her performance and not on the group's performance. I have seen everything that in a group of 5, 2 to 3 students work and others rely on the working students.

Hope this helped.

I see a lot of answers here that are conflating "passive learners" with "introverts" and "active learners" as "extroverts. These categories, in my opinion, don't have anything to do with each other. Indeed, "passive" learners are often the ones spending class time socializing, texting and updating their social media, passing notes, etc. If you're looking for ways to help introverts participate better in class, I'd try to group them with other introverts. This can help their conversations take place in a more even and slow, deeply considered way that should help all of them feel comfortable interacting. Similarly, grouping extroverts together gives them an opportunity to talk to each other in a way that is more comfortable for them - faster, louder, with more interruptions. Mixed groups of introverts and extroverts, while sometime necessary and helpful, can silence the introverts who have more trouble recovering their thoughts after being interrupted or jumping into a very fast moving or energized conversation.

However the question was about active and passive learners, so if that's what you mean, I don't think there are any very clear answers on the subject. (Correct me if I'm wrong, contributors!) What I would do to find out is to vary the groups and observe their behavior. Some of your passive learners may feel inspired by more active group members and participate more, while others may take more control when they're put in a situation where no one else is going to do the work for them unless they step up to the plate themselves. If you have too many students to observe them, you could always pass out papers at the end of group work asking each member to rate the participation levels of the others in the group - not for grading them necessarily, but to assess the effectiveness of that group for those students. Every student will be different and their needs and optimum groupings may not follow any "rules" based on whether they are "active" or "passive."

I hope this helps!

Thanks a lot for the new contributes, very fruitful comments actually. Beside answring the question, the way you- all- expanded the related issues was remarkable! (Grouping (if fixed or changed in each meeting), assessment, whether peered, self, and group assessment, and other points (need another review for the whole comments for more benefit)).

However, I just have one point concerning calling the passive learners as 'introverts'. What I meant with passive is not willing to take part in the class or group discussion, and that might be due several reasons. Mainly students act as passive because they don't have enough master on the language so they are afraid of committing mistakes in front of their peers. But in the case of college students who are supposed to have a good master of their specialization, I think they tend to be passive because they are used to 'depend' on the active ones in the class to respond to the teacher. That, I believe, made them used to play the 'passive' role inside class. And this is definitely is the role of the teacher who 'has' to find best solutions to 'activate' such students. 

We change the groups every day.  I would identify the "passive" students and when I rotate between the groups will ask questions to that student.  Ask for their opinion.  I try to include them in the discussion.  Please take note that our classes have maximum 35 students in a class at a given time.  Therefore it is easier to interact with all the students.  We have a rule that no one is allowed to laugh at any one that try to give their opinion as English is not our first language. I do not believe in formal lectures as students tend to learn more through blended learning. 

Delineating active student from passive student may be counter productive, therefore allowing them to work as a team will motivate the passive group as they can emulate the active members so that they can think out of the box

I used to let the students pick their close friends to become their group members. It end up with the active students gathered altogether in most of the groups and left the small number of passive students to form their own group. Given a competitive learning adventures the groups later competing with each others and the group of passive students were then managed to overcome their passiveness through active group learning activities. It thus given me the idea that if passive students were gathered together in the same group and given a competitive learning activities they will be able to perform at par with active students if not better.   

We are experimenting with mix groups that get together freely around their interest in science and science writing in spanish,  in spite of being  formal students in a variety of fields and institutions. So they talk about their interests and discard  to be leaders or not. That is not a point of their interest, instead  is the individual enrichment  in science and the cooperation between them . So  we held a presential and digital workshop called  Cienciorama   (www.cienciorama.unam.mx) .In this workshop they  never get an   academic evaluation  the  prize they get is to see their work  published in the digital site. Maybe is a good thing to eliminate the official academic evaluations and to give a variety of  possibilities to express itselfs to active and passive individuals.

from my personal opinion, i think combining passive learner with more active ones helps more in teaching and learning. from a socio-cultural perspective theory of Wenger, passive learners will learn as apprentices from the more knowledgeable ones. you can also look at the Zpd which also supports learning of a passive learner from a more knowledgeable peer or helper.

hope this will help

simon

 All comments are helpful and many enlightened new perspectives. Thank you all abundantly 

It was very insightful to read everyone's comments. I do have a concern #Simon Maneya; I have not come across passive learners to be less knowledgeable. Infact they observe and absorb deeper understanding since they maybe good listeners. They might have a hard time articulating their knowledge verbally. I feel letting students chose who they want to work with would be a better option. They will work together stress-free. They should be allowed to reproduce their learning in whatever medium they have an inherent talent for, be it verbal, pictorial, written audio visual - whatever the case maybe. 

I have not been able to find any good empirical studies (full texts) on RG that address the questions dealt with here, but some good papers on the uses and facilitation of group work in Higher Education:

Felder/Brent (2010) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/243456261_Effective_strategies_for_cooperative_learning

Hammar-Chirac (2014) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263100570_Group_work_as_an_incentive_for_learning_-_students%27_experiences_of_group_work

Article Effective strategies for cooperative learning

Article Group work as an incentive for learning – students’ experien...

Great resources, thanks a lot Dr. Wolfgang Deicke. Stay blessed 

For each method there are advantages and disadvantages and believes that the integration of students in the class be better with the teacher not affecting good students. it is an opportunity to give others a potion to learn and self-confidence to follow through their peers in learning and can highlight excellence in examination questions distributed questions by potential students there should be easily resolved question and question average and hard question his solution for achievers feel they are important and distinguished students .or we can separated if there are substantial individual differences in special schools or special classes

My experience suggests that mixing 'passive' and 'engaged' students provide a general better outcome for both groups. But this must be facilitated by a teacher who is very vigilant and keen on progression. The engaged students can provide a motivation (if not allowed to be interrupted) for the passive ones. Sooner or later the passive ones follow the crowd and somehow become engage to a higher degree.

Have a look at some of the resources by Jim Smith. He has some great ideas for involving passive students.  Here is one link below.

http://www.lazyteacher.co.uk/samplelazyteacher.pdf

Grouping passive students on their own has some merits especially if selection is strict and comprehensive. This allows for a more focused target for improvement. Stretching these can be easier than in a mixed group. But we can never get such a selection right. So grouping by such ability has always been a secondary approach to me.

Mixed is preferred in my view and it has worked better for me.

• Both types of grouping have advantages and disadvantages. The strategy used in forming the groups is really important and also strategic distribution of roles within the group. This may facilitate passive learners becoming more engaged but may not translate to a better performance - consider different learning styles and motivating students by linking group work to their own interests.

I randomly assign students to groups and change the group group members with each new assignment. This forces the students to work with a variety of others. The worst thing is to assigned to the same group for the entire semester.

Dear Zainab,

From my experience in math learning, not necessarily for language, but with high probability, it could be convenient mixing all students and apply what professor Giorgianna suggests about changing team members with each new assignment

For undergraduate math courses i got great outcomes mixing students for collaborative work, stablishing rules at the begining and accompanying them all the time.

My mentor has great methods for mixing groups. He showed me that it is important to mix groups with a little foresight to avoid conflicts among members. This may apply more to high school than college, but there may be similar challenges in a collegiate setting. For instance, I have a class where one student had beat up another. They sit diagonally apart from each other, at "neutral corners" and I will make sure to never let a random group assignment end up with them in the same team. Unfortunately, I have to loosely monitor the social relationships among the students. Otherwise, heterogeneity is the way to go.

Our conversation has been very productive. This week in an exploration of a bucket full of compost, I arranged a group of honors biology students by "bravery": which kids looked forward to getting their hands dirty, which kids were terrified, and which kids were curious enough to give digging through it a try. It worked out well, and as we would hope with mixed groups, more engaged or proficient kids (in this case, the "brave" kids) were able to influence the other kids.

Thank you again dear professors and colleagues for your contributions. Yes, I do agree with that specific point concerning changing group members in each lesson. That will raise their motivation to achieve better- in every class- in front of the new members. Also passive members will stop relying on the active ones who accompany them in the same groups each class. 

Disruptives should not be separated from their peers because in the process of learning it has been observed that the concurrence of learning process starts with various examples from the peers.which helps the weaker ones to strive hard .

Along with the passive student active student also should be there 

Thank you 

@Georgianna Tuuri  - In my experience, that (mixing groups for groupwork assignments) too depends on what you want to achieve: if the aim is as you describe it (getting exposed to a variety of different subject, social and communication skills and styles), I'd agree with you suggestion. And it is a good solution to the original question: if groups are asigned randomly and mixing is the/an expressed purpose of the exercise, there is no need to worry about active/passive, able/weaker or other dichotomies of student types. If, however, the aim is to learn something about project management skills or to conduct a student research project, some continuity might be required, along with thought as to how the groups shold best be composed.

This is a two fold response. First, encouraging students to socialize is always a good thing, however, an assessment or observation of these students is required to make the decision to group passive students with active students. Secondly, active students, who are conscientious and socialize appropriately are great assets to helping the passive student. However, if your active students are not aware of social rules and are unconcerned about others and their feelings, then it would be more detrimental to the passive students.

Update:

I have done this for the first 2 weeks. Igrouped students of both capabilities in group of 4- 5. It was a nice experience to some while a terrible one for some others. The majority of the groups have a good cooperation while one of them had a problem of male/ female domination. One male srudents was like "why SHE's the leader of the group?"! And another female leader was harsh in dealing with her members. One of her members complained that she doesn't give him enough to to participate in discussion.

After two week we had a nice experience of "group presentations" which they are experiencing for the first time. 

I agree with Samuel McMurray Fassig ·

An approach to group work is to understand the process and management of a group. I follow a Dialogical Argumentation Instructional Model. This model allows for individual argument, group argument, whole class discussion and facilitator reflection on the discourse for reaching cognitive understanding also called cognitive harmonisation, without denigrating anyone's view or opinion. In a group of 4 or 5 each one is afforded a say on whatever the issue or topic or concern that is being discussed.