Sequence Patterns in Small Group Work Within a Large Online Course

Abstract

A recent challenge in online learning courses is to establish collaboration in small groups. Group work in such courses often has to take place asynchronously, which puts additional requirements on communication and coordination to organise work in a productive way. This paper presents analyses of sequences of actions performed by such small learning groups during collaborative editing of texts in an online tool as part of a university-level online course. There were no face-to-face sessions and coordination between group members was supported by providing discussion forums. Actions of the group members in the forum or the writing tool were encoded as different contribution types, namely coordination, monitoring, minor contribution, and major contribution. Sequences of those actions derived for particular groups were used to explore the differences in the working process between the groups. It is partially possible to attribute those differences in the action sequences to the type of group composition (heterogeneous vs. homogeneous groups). Furthermore, initial evidence could be found that groups with inactive members had difficulties with coordination and tend to start the work late. These insights can be used to design mechanisms to diagnose defective group work and to generate interventions in online learning courses.