This study focuses on teachers' group decision making during Dutch allocation meetings. A previous interview study showed that teachers question the objectivity of decisions due to negative interaction experiences and a lack of structure during these meetings. To characterize the structure and interaction of these meetings, 33 student allocations…

We investigated how the level of variance in students' prior knowledge may have influenced their collaborative interactions and science learning in small groups. We examined learning outcomes from 102 groups from seven science teachers' classes and discourse from two contrasting groups: Homogeneous versus heterogeneous. We examined individual and…

This study aimed to understand the effect of task motivation on online group creative performance and interpersonal interaction. A total of 150 university students were recruited to collaborate online on creativity tasks in dyads. The members' task motivation was manipulated, resulting in three groups that differed in their motivation composition.…

In the conducted field experiment, we explore the intensity of university students' interaction related to the seating arrangement (circle or rows) in pre-service teachers' groups during the reflective practice. We also probe the differences across the various fields of study and evaluate the facilitator's influence on the interaction. We use…

Small-group discussion is a central component of 21st-century biology classrooms. Many factors shape these discussions and thus influence potential learning gains. This study examined how accuracy and idea consideration shaped small-group discussions in undergraduate biology labs (12 groups, M = 42.8 talk turns). To do this, we asked: (1) Is there…

The article introduces a systematic comparison of video-based dyadic interviews and focus groups using newly developed tools for evaluating the success of one way of doing focus groups over another. We conducted a series of online discussions using a video conferencing tool, half of which consisted of four-person focus groups and the other half…

Previous research illustrates the collaborative nature of adolescents' multimodal composing processes. However, few studies have specifically focused on how different modes influence student interactions over time. This study examines how multiple modes (e.g. text, music, visuals, and animations) mediated middle schoolers' composing processes as…

This paper describes the effectiveness of student collaboration as a technique in improving vocabulary development among a group of ESL learners. The main motivation behind this study was the concern that vocabulary has become a neglected area in the teaching of English language. The main aims of the study were to evaluate whether student…

The present study aims to incorporate a group leadership promotion approach into collaborative learning tasks in the hope of developing students' creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, we recruited 59 cross-professional students from a university in northern Taiwan, and…

In this study, we examine how inservice secondary mathematics teachers working together on a contextualized problem negotiate issues arising from the ill-structured nature of the problem such as what assumptions one may make, what real-world considerations should be taken into account, and what constitutes a satisfactory solution. We conceptualize…

A "sense of self-efficacy" is defined as the process of linking knowledge to action, as the assessment of the ability to execute a behavior leading to a certain outcome. A person's perception of self-efficacy has behavioral and emotional implications. When people doubt their own abilities, they tend not to persevere, give up rapidly when…

One pressing issue in resource constrained schools is the lack of access to computer facilities for learning. A single display groupware (SDG) is explored in this paper to provide an alternative solution for this limitation where it allows multiple users to work concurrently on a single computer display. This study aims to investigate the…

This exploratory study focuses on the design and evaluation of teaching analytics that relate social learning structure with performance measures in a massive open online course (MOOC) prototype environment. Using reflexive analysis of online learning trace data and qualitative performance measures we present an exploratory empirical study that:…

The focus of this article is on digital literacy and students' use of digital sources. We are examining how students choose digital video sources when doing group work with tablets in a social studies project. The analysis centers on how students collaboratively negotiate and reason around their choice of video sources during an assignment about…

This study investigates how students who are peripherally positioned in computer science-based, collaborative group work meaningfully engage with the group activity in order to learn. Our research took place in the context of a one-day, all-girl robotics workshop, in which the participants were learning to program robotic devices. A total of 17…