Group projects enable students to build valuable critical thinking and communication skills that are increasingly required for success in the agricultural industry. Group projects provide well-documented benefits; however, associated challenges lead to student and instructor reluctance to engage in group work in the college classroom.…

This personal reflective essay explores a group Dissertation in Practice (DiP) model and process used in a localized Doctor of Education program. It describes and recommends this team-based DiP approach as an innovation that prepares practitioners to tackle complex problems of practice by focusing on a process centered around group dynamics that…

Collaborative problem-solving (CPS) involves the interaction and interdependence of students' social and cognitive skills, making it a complex learning process. To delve into the complex dynamics of CPS, previous research has categorized socio-cognitive roles, providing insights into social-cognitive frameworks. However, despite the specific…

Background: Research groups are social locations where teaching and learning merge among students and a principal investigator (PI). When joining, some students are able to contribute to groundbreaking research that addresses complex problems, under the direction of their PI. However, there are accounts of students having a wide range of negative…

Background: Gender and gender diversity are group features affecting social interaction and are critical for gender-inclusive and equitable education. As such, the role of gender and gender diversity is of particular relevance to computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). However, up until now, research on this topic in CSCL remains scarce.…

Team projects are a component of many business courses. The objective is to build team skills in addition to learning subject matter. However, instructors often pay less attention to team design and behavior and assume students already have or will learn team skills on their own. The authors examined the effect of providing structure to team work…

Communities of practice (CoPs) can provide opportunities for diverse and inclusive groups to convene, share, collaborate, and support others. Using a self-study research approach combined with a visual research method, this study explores both scholarly and practice-based insights to describe the anticipated attributes of a high functioning CoP…

It is through working in groups that students develop cooperative learning skills and experience. However, group work activity often leads students into a difficult experience, especially for first-year students who are not familiar with group work activities at university. This study explores obstacles faced by first-year students during their…

Maybe you heard the line "managing programmers is like herding cats", and if you consider there is some truth behind this, then you should, perhaps, think how it is to teach people to perform this job. As we know from the research literature, there is no such thing as a consensus about the most suitable teaching method of a software…

Team-based learning (TBL) is a form of small-group learning that assumes stable teams promote accountability. Teamwork promotes communication among members; application exercises promote active learning. Students must prepare for each class; failure to do so harms their team's performance. Therefore, TBL promotes accountability. As part of the…

We have studied the types of student teams that are most effective for collaborative learning in a large freshman university physics course. We compared teams in which the students were all of roughly equal ability to teams with a mix of student abilities, we compared teams with three members to teams with four members, and we examined teams with…

Group research projects frequently are used to teach undergraduate research methods. This study uses multivariate analyses to examine the characteristics of higher-achieving groups (those that earn higher grades on group research projects) and to estimate the effects of participating in higher-achieving groups on subsequent individual learning…

To prepare graduates for today's work environment, they must be immersed in positive (and perhaps negative) small group experiences in their courses, which will in turn provide a basic understanding of how teams form and develop over time. In the fall of 2009, we started exploring how software development teams form and interact in a computer…

In construction industries' projects, working in groups is a normal practice. Group work in a classroom is defined as students working collaboratively in a group so that everyone can participate on a collective task. The results from literature review indicate that group work is more effective method of learning as compared to individual work.…

Small group work is common practice in higher education. However, empirical research on students' emotions related to group work is still relatively scarce. Particularly, little is known about students' appraisals of a group task as antecedents of emotions arising in the context of group work. This paper provides a first attempt to systematically…