When problem based learning occurs in a social context it is open to a common social behaviour, scrounging. In the animal behaviour literature, scroungers do not attempt to find resources themselves but rather exploit resources found by other group members (referred to as producers). We know from studies of animal behaviour (including humans) that…

The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of academic engagement of twelve Indonesian doctoral students attending an American graduate school during their first term and over time through demographic background surveys and semi-structured in-depth interviews. The research design was qualitative in the phenomenological approach…

Online interaction is considered to be a key aspect of effective e-learning and improved academic achievement. However, few studies have examined how effectiveness varies with the degree of interaction intensity. Using data for 17,090 students from three Catalan universities, in this paper we study the productivity associated with five different…

There is considerable agreement about the fact that the presence of researchers in the classroom mediates teaching and learning. Why "should" two very different forms of human activity, one designed to study the other, interact and mediate each other? In this article, we propose cultural-historical activity theory as a framework for understanding…

This essay about the work of a famous anthropologist is an attempt to illuminate one way that researchers could apply their findings about the behavior of people in particular groups to ethical considerations of social relations. I argue that Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) is a good example because he applied a few seminal ideas to a wide range of…

In a group situation, something goes wrong but no individual feels personal responsibility. This is called the "pie" phenomenon because everybody has a piece of the action, but all believe they are innocent. Each contributes to contagion and chaos but all say, "We didn't do nothing." In this article, the author, a pioneer in work with troubled…

Group work is an integral part of many courses in business communication programs. Benefits are numerous: Students can develop projects more comprehensively, hone their interpersonal skills, be exposed to other points of view, gain insight into group dynamics, and become prepared for teamwork in their careers. Nevertheless, students often report…

Even given the countless hours clocked in class and rehearsal time, there's nothing that compares to a road trip to seal the bond among band, orchestra, and vocal music students. "Nothing can replace travel," says Peter Markes, orchestra director at Edmond North High School in Oklahoma. "It's safe, well-structured and, for many of…

The purpose of this article is to examine local, interactional processes associated with the construction of power asymmetries in collaborative teamwork among engineering students. To explore the construction of power asymmetries at the micro-interactional level, this article examines a corpus consisting of about 150,000 words in which seven teams…

This paper proposes that given today's "wicked" problems (Malhotra, 1997), where there are complex issues with no clear answers, where boundaries are fuzzy and the outcome is usually never known and unexpected, creativity can be enhanced, at appropriate moments, by making modes of thinking explicit. Using a particular heuristic approach…

This practical book will help school districts and teacher-education departments create and sustain effective partnerships to support teacher development. The authors--supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation--worked with school districts and universities on collaborating to improve pre- and inservice training for teachers. In this…

This dissertation focuses on quantum linguistics, a sub-field of philosophy of language, preoccupied with studying of the processes on a virtual drive of the human mind: patterns and dynamics of thoughts, verbal and non-verbal codification, cultural conditioning, and foreign language acquisition. While adopting an educational perspective fitting…

Students often use study groups to prepare for class or exams; yet to date, we know very little about how these groups actually function. This study looked at the ways in which undergraduate organic chemistry students prepared for exams through self-initiated study groups. We sought to characterize the methods of social regulation, levels of…

The widespread turn towards "collaboration" in qualitative research methodologies warrants careful and continuous critique. This paper addresses the possibilities and the challenges of collaborative methodology, and in particular what happens when the line between pedagogy and methodology is blurred in classroom-based ethnographic…

This article examines how principals describe the nature of relationships and presence (or absence) of relational trust among teachers, and between the teachers and the principal in the discourse of professional learning communities. Participants were 12 school principals from urban, suburban, and rural communities in Manitoba. In the discourse of…