Collaborative Learning Process Research Articles

The use of technology in a Technical English classroom

Teachers are experiencing important changes, whether they have already turned into reality or not, in the daily classroom work in most of our school centres due to the progressive establishment and incorporation of ICTS. These changes allow the development of new didactic materials of an electronic nature which use varied and different standings for their carrying into practice. These new standings of information generate a huge communicative innovation provoking as such new settings of collaborative learning process. With the scope of getting used to the needs of the present society of knowledge, the Spanish education system in all its areas of knowledge, specifically that of Technical English, and by extension the whole scholar network, must develop new ways of integrating the new information and communication technologies in its daily teaching practice. It is also advisable, at the same time, a change of mentality so as to face the traditional roles assumed by both teachers and students in these teaching practices. This is mainly reflected in the proper channels of communication as well as in the design of new methodologies and teaching practices. The aim of this article is to set the role of the modern FL teacher in a Technical English classroom when facing the massive use of ICTs in the teaching-learning process as well as all the resources at their disposal for their didactic exploitation. We will focus our attention in those specific cases of FL teachers and the wide range of resources which they can make use of. Henceforth, we will deepen in this article the need to get used to the new methodological tendencies and the possibilities that the use of ICTs allows us in our daily classroom practice. Therefore, we will enumerate some practical methodological orientations so as to be able to face them in a serious, determined, organized, and structured way.

Knowledge-building and metacognition matter: Detecting differences between high- and low-performance groups in computer-supported collaborative learning

ABSTRACT Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) has been widely adopted in the field of education. However, most studies focus on collaborative learning outcomes rather than collaborative learning processes. It is still unclear why some groups fail in CSCL. Therefore, this study extracted four process variables, namely, knowledge-building, metacognitive patterns, emotional status, and participation, to investigate the differences between high- and low-performance groups. In total, 81 undergraduate students participated in this study for one month. The results indicated that there were significant differences in knowledge-building and metacognitive patterns between the high- and low-performance groups. The high-performance groups built more knowledge and engaged in more diverse metacognitive transitions than the low-performance groups. However, no differences in emotional status or participation were found between the two groups. The results and implications are discussed in depth.

The Impact of Collaborative Learning and Personality on Satisfaction in Innovative Teaching Context.

Flipped teaching is one of the most popular innovative teaching methods which has attracted a lot of attention and lead to amount of discussion in recent years. Many educators have generally encountered same doubt when implementing flipped education: Is this kind of teaching mode only applicable to students with high learning achievements? In addition, collaborative learning is often applied in flip teaching and it is also an issue worth to explore. In this study, both quantitative and qualitative studies were conducted to examine the potential factors in affecting the learners’ satisfaction in flipped education. The survey results from 171 participants showed that collaborative learning and need for cognition are significant predictors of learning satisfaction. In addition, a deeper look at the collaborative learning process was further examined by conducting deep interview. A total of 12 students from 6 different flipped-teaching courses participated the interview. The findings suggested that arranging some activities to encourage students to know each other before class that helps students find corresponding group and facilitates their expertise for collaborative learning. The mechanism significantly influenced team members’ engagement, discussion atmosphere, and efficiency. In addition, when learning tasks diversity, it will also enhance students’ innovative ability, empathy, and even promote mutual learning.

Student participatory role profiles in collaborative science learning: Relation of within-group configurations of role profiles and achievement

During collaborative learning, students tend to spontaneously enact different participatory roles that may significantly affect collaborative learning processes. Only few empirical studies to date have investigated groups as systems based on emerging roles and role profiles of the participating students, and how emerging role profile configurations affect achievement. This exploration of students' self-adopted roles investigated the relationship between role profile configurations and achievement. The statistically driven identification of role profiles was based on fine-grained observations of student groups' interactions in two distinct collaborative science-learning settings. While higher achieving groups typically exhibited versatile science-oriented role profile configurations, opinion-based configurations prevailed in lower achieving groups. Although role profiles with a social orientation were rare, a student with a distracting profile can have a significant influence on group work. Consolidated by in-depth case examples, the findings highlight the importance of understanding how collaborating groups' emergent role profiles dynamically interact during collaborative learning and how different role profile configurations relate to achievement. • The study identifies students' self-adopted roles and role profiles. • Identification of role profiles was based on fine-grained coding of interactions. • The study suggests how role profile configurations relate to achievement. • Configurations differ in higher- and lower-achieving groups. • The significance of role profiles for collaborative learning is discussed.

Exploring groups\u2019 affective states during collaborative learning: what triggers activating affect on a group level?

During collaborative learning, affect is constantly present in groups’ interactions, influencing and shaping the learning process. The aim of this study was to understand what type of learning situations trigger affective states in collaborative groups, and how these affective states are related to group members’ physiological activation. The participants were 12-year-old primary school students (N = 31, 10 groups) performing a collaborative science task. In the analysis, video data observations were combined with data of group members’ physiological activation. The groups’ situational valence was identified based on the group members’ observed emotional expressions and their physiological activation levels were measured with electrodermal activity (EDA). Results revealed that situations with group members’ simultaneous physiological activation were rare compared with the observable emotional expressions. However, when group members indicated physiological activation simultaneously, they also showed visible emotional expressions more often than in deactivating situations. Moreover, the results showed that socially-related factors were more likely to trigger physiological activation with a mixed group level valence. In turn, task-related factors were more likely to trigger physiological activation with a neutral group level valence. The results of this study imply that by combining different process data modalities revealing the different components of affect, it might be possible to track emotionally meaningful situations that shape the course of the collaborative learning process.

Collaborative Learning Experiences in a Changing Environment: Innovative Educational Approaches in Architecture

The sense of uncertainty and fragility due to the effects and magnitude of global challenges we are facing (from the circumstances of the pandemic to the impacts of climate change) requires—much more than in the past—the capacity to generate a visionary and forefront design approach in the young generation, with an aim to stimulate their reaction attitude rather than providing consolidated tools from past conditions that no longer exist or will rapidly evolve. Within this general framework, we have investigated the effectiveness and impacts of experienced-based methods of learning and innovative educational tools in architecture that are aimed at shaping expertise that addresses the aspects of environment and climate change in the context of socio-cultural dynamics, real potentialities and constraints, and their transdisciplinary trajectories. We analyzed five international pioneering teaching experiences that provided the opportunity to understand the outcomes of collaborative and experiential learning processes by which the educational activities leverage dialogue between diverse communities (including academia, citizens, policymakers, and practitioners). The study outcomes show that shifting the pedagogical paradigm towards experience-based models can improve the awareness of future practitioners for the climate implications of architectural design, implement their analysis and project skills, and trigger processes of knowledge transfer and co-production at the community level. Experience-based models also allow them to better address the societal and cultural issues involved in decision making.

Making tutorial films on picturebooks in teacher education

In this article we analyze two films about picturebooks, made in student-led groups in a children’s literature course at university level. We also investigate the self-assessments the students wrote. The assignment was designed to explore specific Norwegian picturebooks, in this case Snill (What a girl!) by Gro Dahle and Svein Nyhus and Garmanns Sommer (Garmann’s Secret) by Stian Hole. Our aim is to highlight in which ways this assignment expanded the students’ knowledge on picturebooks and literature didactics. For this purpose, we build upon picturebook theory, theories on multimodality and theories on collaborative learning processes.
 Our findings support results and ideas in other studies on how to use and produce multimodal artefacts and digitized media in collaborative learning contexts (Jewitt, 2006; Jewitt, 2013; Kress & Selander, 2011; Selander, 2015), and studies on the potential of collaborative teaching and learning processes, and of students’ self-assessments (Alexander,2017). Both films present and discuss the interplay between words and images in ways that demonstrate solid knowledge of picturebook theory. The analyses also indicate that this kind of film making project may foster a high degree of student engagement suited to achieve in-depth knowledge on topics within the field of children’s literature.

Teaching Innovation in the Development of Professional Practices: Use of the Collaborative Blog

The development of professional practices during the university stage is a fundamental factor for quality skills development. For many students, it is the first real experience in a professional context, so continuous monitoring by teachers is necessary. This article presents an innovative proposal to develop the follow-up of the professional practices of the degree in Primary Education, and two Masters’ in Psychopedagogy and Special Educational Needs using a learning management system (LMS) (Blackboard). The experience was developed by a team of teachers from the departments of Didactics and Educational Organization and Research Methods and Educational Diagnosis of the University of Seville (Spain). The aspects to be studied are the development of communication, reflection, and collaborative learning processes during the internship period. After an explicit agreement, 24 students (10 from the course “Professional Practices I” in undergraduate students; and the others from the Master’s) committed to periodically using the blog designed ad hoc for this experience. A content analysis of the speeches posted on the blog was carried out, examining the changes, the advantages, and the disadvantages that this model entailed. It allowed observing similarities and differences between both groups of students. As the main conclusion, there were some differences between the two groups of students, regarding the number, type, and contents of interventions; there were no differences in the assessment of the methodology, all the students thought that it was a very positive assessment of the experience for generating information exchange networks among colleagues and teachers. Finally, the relevance of constant monitoring of the academic tutor was highlighted.

Collaborative Learning of High-Precision Quantum Control and Tomography

In the hardware implementation of quantum computation, the control pulses for quantum states and gate operations must be calibrated to correct errors induced by unknown drifts of system parameters. The calibration can be iteratively done by checking the control precision, but the required randomized benchmarking or quantum tomography is experimentally expensive. In this paper, we propose that the control calibration and the quantum tomography can be taken as two separate but collaborative learning processes. Combining the gradient-descent pulse engineering and the adaptive tomography, the resulting c-GRAPE algorithm can substantially reduce the high cost of measurements without sacrificing the control accuracy. The effectiveness is demonstrated by numerical simulation examples.

The Improvement of Women’s Entrepreneurial Competence in Rural Tourism: An Action Learning Perspective

Rural tourism is especially appealing to women entrepreneurs. While managing rural tourism businesses requires complex abilities, rural women in most cases are impoverished and poorly educated and have scarce resources; this limits their opportunities to independently develop comprehensive abilities. Focusing on the case of a 10-year regional program aiming specifically to improve women’s entrepreneurship in China, this study examines the actual behaviors of women entrepreneurs and the outcomes of entrepreneurship improvement due to the developmental agency’s intervention. From the perspective of action learning, this study not only reveals the vital role of intellectual support, which complies with the nature of knowledge in tourism, but also proposes a theoretical framework describing the dynamic collaborative learning process between the development agency’s staff and entrepreneurs responding to the changing market. The collaborative action learning drives women entrepreneurs to overcome barriers in practice, improve entrepreneurship, and achieve independence.

Fostering Pre-Service Teachers’ Reflection in Self-Regulatory Process Through Socio-Emotional Collaborative Note-Taking in the mCSCL Environment

Self-regulation is an essential skill in teacher development, especially for pre-service teachers who need to develop their own self-regulated skills while simultaneously promoting self-regulation in learners. This study outlines a teacher development program in which pre-service teachers participated in a self-regulatory process in a Mobile Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (mCSCL) online learning environment. Our aim is to fill the existing gap in this area by adding more collaborative learning processes. This study aimed to investigate the predictive effects that self-evaluation to define tasks and goals (at forethought phase) has on self-reflection, which is mediated by collaboration. Furthermore, we have drawn the possibility of embedding collaboration into the socio-emotional note-taking process by using the concept of mCSCL throughout the self-regulated learning process. Data was collected from undergraduate students, working as pre-service teachers, and studying at two institutes in Thailand (N=147), with 17 items of self-regulatory inventory obtained from the original self-regulatory inventory together with 5 other collaboration developed by the author. Structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis was used to confirm a partial mediation model via direct and indirect effects. Later the path analysis, the qualitative data is acquired to re-design the socio-emotional collaborative note-taking on mCSCL tools during the self-regulatory learning process, corresponding with the model testing phase according to the previous study by a semi-structure interview with 5 pre-service teachers. The results proved that collaboration was found to be a significant partial mediator of self-evaluation and self-reflection, in accordance with the empirical data. With our findings we were able to design a socio-emotional collaborative note-taking activity in the mCSCL setting. We proposed collaborative note-taking activities which collaboration procedure is highlighted throughout 3 phases: collaboration in pre-performance (recording ideas and planning), collaboration during the performance (sharing and brainstorming, support and seeking helps), and collaboration in post-performance (reflecting and evaluating) in which the activity was taking place between instructors and peers during supervision period.

Implementasi Kebijakan Program Lesson Study Berbasis Sekolah (LSBS) di MINU Trate Putri Gresik

This research aims to describe the course of policy implementation Lesson Study, to know the things that support and are an obstacle in implementing policies and programs Lesson Study to determine the impact / results in implementing the policy program at the Lesson study MINU Trate Putri Gresik. This research uses Qualitative approaches, data collection technique through the process of observation, interviews, documentation, and questionnaires. Data analysis was performed based on four interrelated components, namely data collection, data reduction, presentation of data, the data inference. For overcome the obstacles that occur MINU Trate Putri always try to maximize all of the potential that exists. Among them is the rescheduling of any activity that is not done, the conversion or exchange of teaching hours to be optimal in the observation, as well as the fulfillment of all the necessary infrastructure. The impact of the implementation of the School-Based Lesson Study program includes a change in the paradigm of teachers in a more open, creative and collaborative learning process as well as increasing achievements that have been achieved by students, teachers and schools in general.

Fact-Checking Skills And Project-Based Learning About Infodemic And Disinformation

• University students are increasingly involved in autonomous and collaborative learning processes. • Based on thematic-experiential classes and through the project-based learning methodology, this teaching experience consisted of lecturing a fake class. • The objective of this study was to raise awareness of the risks of disinformation and infodemics and to identify the main social competencies and skills related to fact-checking. • Training in fact-checking skills appeared to improve job performance and undoubtedly contributed to the personal development of future graduates. In today's high-information and high-communication society, university students are increasingly involved in autonomous and collaborative learning processes, which require active methodologies to facilitate the integration of social competencies. The objective of this study was to raise awareness of the risks of disinformation and infodemics and to identify the main social competencies and skills related to fact-checking that students should acquire. Based on thematic-experiential classes and through the project-based learning methodology, this teaching experience consisted of lecturing a fake class in the communication degree programme, in which the professor gave a speech to 150 students about coronavirus that contained both hoaxes and true information, thus challenging students to identify false information. The results obtained in this qualitative study are divided into three parts to answer each research question. The first part is focused on identifying the most influential hoaxes about the coronavirus that young people have embraced as reliable information during the 2020 pandemic (RQ1). The second part is dedicated to explaining students’ reactions when they are involved in infodemic contexts. We also point out the main challenge that arose in a period of infodemics (RQ2). In the third part, we propose the main fact-checking skills that students should acquire to tackle disinformation in a period of infodemics (RQ3). Training in these skills appeared to improve job performance and undoubtedly contributed to the personal development of our future graduates.

Prefrontal Inter-brain Synchronization Reflects Convergence and Divergence of Flow Dynamics in Collaborative Learning: A Pilot Study.

Flow is a highly motivated and affectively positive state in which a person is deeply engaged in an activity and feeling enjoyment from it. In collaborative activities, it would be optimal if all participants were in a state of flow. However, flow states fluctuate amongst individuals due to differences in the dynamics of motivation and cognition. To explore the possibility that inter-brain synchronization can provide a quantitative measure of the convergence and divergence of collective motivational dynamics, we conducted a pilot study to investigate the relationship between inter-brain synchronization and the interpersonal similarity of flow state dynamics during the collaborative learning process. In two English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes, students were divided into groups of three-four and seated at desks facing each other while conducting a 60-min group work. In both classes, two groups with four members were randomly selected, and their medial prefrontal neural activities were measured simultaneously using wireless functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) devices. Later the participants observed their own activities on recorded videos and retrospectively rated their subjective degree of flow state on a seven-point scale for each 2-min period. For the pairs of students whose neural activities were measured, the similarity of their flow experience dynamics was evaluated by the temporal correlation between their flow ratings. Prefrontal inter-brain synchronization of the same student pairs during group work was evaluated using wavelet transform coherence. Statistical analyses revealed that: (1) flow dynamics were significantly more similar for the student pairs within the same group compared to the pairs of students assigned across different groups; (2) prefrontal inter-brain synchronization in the relatively short time scale (9.3-13.9 s) was significantly higher for the within-group pairs than for the cross-group pairs; and (3) the prefrontal inter-brain synchronization at the same short time scale was significantly and positively correlated with the similarity of flow dynamics, even after controlling for the effects of within- vs. cross-group pair types from the two variables. These suggest that inter-brain synchronization can indeed provide a quantitative measure for converging and diverging collective motivational dynamics during collaborative learning, with higher inter-brain synchronization corresponding to a more convergent flow experience.

The Influence of Culture on Collaborative Learning Practices in Higher Education

Abstract Objective: This study systematically identifies the various pertinent cultural dimensions and the group processes involved in collaborative peer learning before empirically exploring their associations among a sample of university students. Methodology: Twenty statements encompassing various cultural dimensions that could possibly influence students’ preferences towards collaborative peer learning practices were incorporated into a survey. The data were collected from 147 multicultural students studying applied sciences in Finland. Chi-squared test of independence was used to test the association between the cultural dimension scores for students and their stated preferences for collaborative learning practices. Findings: A major finding of this study is that learners from diverse cultural backgrounds have differing modes of engaging in the eight separate collaborative learning processes. The findings clearly reveal that students from cultures that are hierarchical, collectivist, less bound by rules, and traditional are less likely to have any prior familiarity with peer-learning methods. It seems relatively clear that the power distance and collectivism dimensions have the greatest impact on shaping the preferences of students for collaborative peer-learning methods. Value Added: Very few studies have looked at how the cultural backgrounds of students can influence their use of, and preferences towards, collaborative peerlearning methods. This study identifies key processes in collaborative learning practices, which are shaped by culture as communication, decision-making, leadership, evaluation, trust building, the expression of disagreement, scheduling, and persuasion within a peer group. Recommendations: This study found that Hofstede’s framework might be too constraining when understanding how culture shapes a student’s preferences towards collaborative peer learning in the educational context. It would be even more fruitful to develop an altogether endogenous framework that is more suitable for exploring the influence of culture on learning and education. Such a model should identify the various dimensions of culture beyond those of national identity and consider how they jointly influence attitudes towards collaborative learning rather than considering them in isolation. This model should also take a more dynamic approach towards both culture and learning.

ÎNVĂŢAREA COLABORATIVĂ ÎN CADRUL UNEI CERCETĂRI ACŢIUNE DEZVOLTATĂ PENTRU A RĂSPUNDE PROVOCĂRILOR IMPUSE DE ŞCOALA ONLINE

The measures put in place to stop the spread of the Covid-19 have had a major impact on the organization of educational processes. School teachers have been faced with overnight digitalization of their activities without always receiving adequate support with this transition. The present paper reports on a participatory action research project in the form of a tutoring program that sought to understand and respond to these challenges. The project took the form of an open learning initiative addressed to teachers in April – June 2020, followed by a data collection and analysis phase. 37 teachers in four Romanian counties benefited from personalized forms of support offered by 20 student- tutors enrolled in the Educational Sciences Department at the West University in Timişoara. All project activities were carried out at a distance, in the vast majority of cases, online. In analyzing the data produced by the project (tutor reflection log entries, qualitative interviews and focus groups with teachers and tutor students) we seek to answer the following research question: How did a collaborative learning process emerge as part of a participatory action research project carried out during the onset of online teaching and learning practices?. The collaborative learning responded to teachers’ immediate and individual needs regarding the development of digital competences, as well as related to pedagogical and emotional support. Through the tutoring program, the expected roles of the educational actors were reversed: since the undergraduate students were not primarily beneficiaries of the educational processes, but took on an active part as facilitators of the teachers’ learning processes. Thus, a competence transfer from the university to the pre- university environment took place, at a faster rate than it would usually happen.

Decentralised Learning from Independent Multi-Domain Labels for Person Re-Identification

Deep learning has been successful for many computer vision tasks due to the availability of shared and centralised large-scale training data. However, increasing awareness of privacy concerns poses new challenges to deep learning, especially for human subject related recognition such as person re-identification (Re-ID). In this work, we solve the Re-ID problem by decentralised learning from non-shared private training data distributed at multiple user sites of independent multi-domain label spaces. We propose a novel paradigm called Federated Person Re-Identification (FedReID) to construct a generalisable global model (a central server) by simultaneously learning with multiple privacy-preserved local models (local clients). Specifically, each local client receives global model updates from the server and trains a local model using its local data independent from all the other clients. Then, the central server aggregates transferrable local model updates to construct a generalisable global feature embedding model without accessing local data so to preserve local privacy. This client-server collaborative learning process is iteratively performed under privacy control, enabling FedReID to realise decentralised learning without sharing distributed data nor collecting any centralised data. Extensive experiments on ten Re-ID benchmarks show that FedReID achieves compelling generalisation performance beyond any locally trained models without using shared training data, whilst inherently protects the privacy of each local client. This is uniquely advantageous over contemporary Re-ID methods.

Studying Collaboration Dynamics in Physical Learning Spaces: Considering the Temporal Perspective through Epistemic Network Analysis.

The role of the learning space is especially relevant in the application of active pedagogies, for example those involving collaborative activities. However, there is limited evidence informing learning design on the potential effects of collaborative learning spaces. In particular, there is a lack of studies generating evidence derived from temporal analyses of the influence of learning spaces on the collaborative learning process. The temporal analysis perspective has been shown to be essential in the analysis of collaboration processes, as it reveals the relationships between students’ actions. The aim of this study is to explore the potential of a temporal perspective to broaden understanding of the effects of table shape on collaboration when different group sizes and genders are considered. On-task actions such as explanation, discussion, non-verbal interaction, and interaction with physical artefacts were observed while students were engaged in engineering design tasks. Results suggest that table shape influences student behaviour when taking into account different group sizes and different genders.

Outdoor Office Work - An Interactive Research Project Showing the Way Out.

The physical boundaries of office work have become increasingly flexible. Work is conducted at multiple locations outside the office, such as at clients’ premises, at home, in cafés, or when traveling. However, the boundary between indoor and outdoor environment seems to be strong and normative regarding how office work is performed. The aim of this study was to explore how office work may be conducted outdoors, understanding how it is being experienced by office employees and identifying its contextual preconditions. Based on a two-year interactive research project, the study was conducted together with a Swedish municipality. Fifty-eight participants engaged in the collaborative learning process, including 40 half-day workshops and reflective group discussions, co-interviews, and participants’ independent experimentation of bringing work activities outdoors. Data was collected via interviews, group discussions and a custom-made mobile application. The results showed that a wide range of work activities could be done outdoors, both individually and in collaboration with others. Outdoor work activities were associated with many positive experiences by contributing to a sense of well-being, recovery, autonomy, enhanced cognition, better communication, and social relations, but also with feelings of guilt and illegitimacy. Conditions of importance for outdoor office work to happen and function well were found in the physical environment, where proximity to urban greenspaces stood out as important, but also in the sociocultural and organizational domains. Of crucial importance was managers’ attitudes, as well as the overall organizational culture on this idea of bringing office work outdoors. To conclude, if working life is to benefit from outdoor office work, leaders, urban planners and policymakers need to collaborate and show the way out.

Incorporating reading circles into a task-based EAP reading scheme

AbstractThis study explored how reading circles (RCs) can be incorporated into a task-based reading curriculum in academic classroom settings. It investigated students’ perceptions of academic RC tasks and examined their effectiveness in improving students’ reading abilities and critical thinking skills. Twenty-six EFL university students majoring in Business English participated in the study. They were asked to read English business journal articles weekly, assigned different roles and tasks to complete, and given opportunities to share interpretations in class. Data were collected from questionnaires, interviews, students’ reflective journals, reading proficiency tests, and weekly homework. The results show that students held quite positive attitudes toward RC tasks in academic contexts and confirmed their effectiveness in enhancing their reading abilities and critical thinking skills through a collaborative learning process. Such a reading scheme has been proved to be a pedagogically appropriate approach for language development in academic contexts.