Group work and collaboration

CC BY  by LUMAXART

Reflections on topic 3

Students and distance learning and collaboration is really a challenging task. My experience is that it is harder to get the on-line student to take part in a group and to collaborate than the students on campus. There are some students that like to study and learn in the “group-community” but most of them seems to choose not to take part. I am not familiar with all the reasons of not taking part, but one of them are that on-line learning seems to be that you can learn everything whenever you want to. See the lectures when you want. Do the tasks when you want and if there are groups and group work that are planned you can’t participate because you never have the time. It is more common that the campus students take part and maybe that is because the teacher and student relation stand for some other kind of commitment when having the personal, face-to-face, meetings.    

There is, of course, possible to make a group session obligatory but with the obligatory they have to be separately examined and the administration effort will increase. I wish I had some ideas about how to do these more attractive. The students that use the opportunity to work in a group are often the ones that are highly motivated and who wants a high degree on the examination. To form study groups that works well are difficult. According to Brindley et al.on-line learners avoid groups that they have not chosen themselves (1). Collaboration in a way that build the students’ knowledge more than working alone is preferable. It should also be good to be able to have a direct way to measure increased knowledge due to good collaboration. I think that the term “positive interdependence”, described in the review by Capdeferro and Romero, when creating a course, is something that you want to reach but it is not so easy to know how to do it.  When campus PBL-groups work really well the members first have had the time to get to know each other. The group have also had a forgiving atmosphere and friendship and commitment has developed. To try to create this in an online environment seems more difficult. My students don’t often want to take part with their camera, and that also tends to give a feeling of stranger ship. In our PBL-group 11 we have talked about frustration when group members don’t do what they are expected to do. That seems to be a common problem in groups online also described by Capdeferro and Romero (2). It is a problem in all types of group work I think. Free riders that don’t care so much, don’t want so much or whatever it depends on.  

References
1) Brindley, J., Blaschke, L. M. & Walti, C. (2009). Creating effective collaborative learning groups in an online environment. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(3) Available here

2) Capdeferro, N. & Romero, M. (2012). Are online learners frustrated with collaborative learning experiences?. The International review of research in open and distance learning, 13(2), 26-44 Available here