supervisor: Loes Hogenkamp & Chandan Dasgupta
Topic
Learning is not something that happens by merely placing students together in a group. For collaborative learning to be a fruitful learning experience for all students in the group, it should meet certain requirements. Do all students feel comfortable in the group setting to ‘play their part’? Are all students in a group equally equipped (i.e., ability-wise and social-emotionally) to participate in the joint assignment? Are group members able to regulate the group process effectively?
In order for collaborative learning to lead to high-quality learning processes for all students in a group, a couple requirements need to be met. Some have been researched extensively, others require more research in order for educational designers to make proper design decisions. Like the concept of socially-shared regulation, a group-derivative of self-regulation, that determines the flow of the group process. And uncertainty management of individuals within a group.
Socially-shared regulation
For collaborative learning to be successful, students should collectively regulate and adapt cognition, metacognition, behavior and motivation, which is called the socially-shared regulation of learning (SSRL). This will guide the group towards better decision making and execution of collaborative processes, which enhances learning. In comparison to individual self-regulation, already considered a difficult process for many students, engaging in SSRL calls for additional coordination and communication between group members, which might be a difficult task for students to tackle.
Uncertainty management
Uncertainty is defined as an experience of doubt, confusion, and wondering about a situation. It may be personal/shared and subjective/intersubjective experience influenced by self and others. It could be due to lack of knowledge, inherent unknowns in the task, ambiguity of working together in a group, and risk of not reaching the goal. Uncertainty management can be understood as a process of engaging in actions and behaviors aimed at resolving these uncertainties. When students work collaboratively in a group and manage uncertainty productively, they engage in collaborative learning, metacognitive thinking, perform systematic experimentation to reduce uncertainty in an informed manner, negotiate from multiple perspectives, and are motivated to solve problems persistently. Uncertainty and its management mediate sharing of ideas, explanation formation, and co-creation of artifacts thus facilitating collaboration and collaborative learning.
Individual differences
Collaborative methods often use the ‘one-size-fits-all’ principle. However, students might have different needs, preferences, abilities, and characteristics that determine their behavior in a group process and, thus, the success of the collaborative learning process.
Method
In this study, you will explore possible relations between students’ personal characteristics (e.g., ability level, self-efficacy, personality traits) and their abilities to engage in socially-shared regulation and/or uncertainty management when part of a collaborative learning setting.
You will start with some literature review to familiarize yourself with the variables of your choice. You will collect data by observing students’ behavior when working on a collaborative task and by asking them to complete one or more questionnaires. The collected data will be used to answer one or more of the following example research questions*:
- To what extent is there a relation between students’ level of self-efficacy and their level of socially-shared regulation during a collaborative process?
- To what extent is there a relation between students’ ability level and their level of socially-shared regulation during a collaborative process?
- To what extent is there a relation between students’ individual self-regulation skills and their level of socially-shared regulation during a collaborative process?
- To what extent is there a relation between students’ individual self-regulation skills and their level of uncertainty management during a collaborative process?
- To what extent is there a relation between students’ self-regulation skills and their orientation towards uncertainties during a collaborative process?
- To what extent is there a relation between students’ transactive communication and their uncertainty management strategies during a collaborative process?
* It is possible to create your own research question, focusing on specific variables that indicate individual differences between student in a group.
references
- Dragnić-Cindrić, D., Greene, J., & Anderson, J. (2020). The role of uncertainty in social regulation of learning. The Proceedings of the 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences, 2020. https://repository.isls.org/bitstream/1/6750/1/759-760.pdf
- Hogenkamp, L., van Dijk, A.M., & Eysink, T.H.S. (2021). Analyzing socially shared regulation of learning during cooperative learning and the role of equal contribution: A grounded theory approach. Education Sciences, 11, 512. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11090512
- Kaur, N., & Dasgupta, C. (2024). Investigating the interplay of epistemological and positional framing during collaborative uncertainty management. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 33(1), 80-124. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2024.2312163