Patterns of students' collaborations by variations in their learning orientations in blended course designs: How is it associated with academic achievement?

Abstract

Background While a number of learner factors have been identified to impact students' collaborative learning, there has been little systematic research into how patterns of students' collaborative learning may differ by their learning orientations. Objectives This study aimed to investigate: (1) variations in students' learning orientations by their conceptions, approaches, and perceptions; (2) the patterns of students' collaborations by variations in their learning orientations and (3) the contribution of patterns of collaborations to academic achievement. Methods A cohort of 174 Chinese undergraduates in a blended engineering course were surveyed for their conceptions of learning, approaches to learning and to using online learning technologies, and perceptions of e‐learning, to identify variations in their learning orientations. Students' collaborations and mode of collaborations were collected through an open‐ended social network analysis (SNA) questionnaire. Results and Conclusions A hierarchical cluster analysis identified an ‘understanding’ and ‘reproducing’ learning orientations. Based on students' learning orientations and their choices to collaborate, students were categorized into three mutually exclusive collaborative group, namely Understanding Collaborative group, Reproducing Collaborative group and Mixed Collaborative group. SNA centrality measures demonstrated that students in the Understanding Collaborative group had more collaborations and stayed in a better position in terms of capacity to gather information. Both students' approaches to learning and students' average collaborations significantly contributed to their academic achievement, explaining 3% and 4% of variance in their academic achievement respectively. The results suggest that fostering a desirable learning orientation may help improve students' collaborative learning.

Comparative interaction patterns of groups in an open network environment: The role of facilitators in collaborative learning

“…They share and pursue common interests and achieve common goals (Zarzour et al, 2020). Online learners' interactive behaviours can significantly affect their learning performance (Goggins & Xing, 2016; Han et al, 2022; Li & Tsai, 2017). The study found that the group which exhibits more discussion behaviours tend to have higher collaborative performance (Hwang et al, 2012).…”

Level of consistency between students’ self-reported and observed study approaches in flipped classroom courses: How does it influence students’ academic learning outcomes?

“…Furthermore, the present study only used one type of observational log data-frequency to examine students' observed study approaches. The advancement of learning analytics functions has made it possible to record a diversity of types of log data, such as time spent on different types of online learning activities (duration), the exact time at which a logged event occurs (timestamp), and the sequences of online events (sequence) [22,[57][58][59]. Therefore, future studies may employ multiple types of log data to examine students' observed study approaches [49,50].…”

“…However, fully relying on the observational log data to examine students' study approaches without guidance from educational theories has also received criticism of being data-centric, which could result in erroneous interpretations due to a lack of sound theories and meaningful contexts [20]. To address the drawbacks of the self-reported and observational log data, in recent years, researchers have begun to employ both self-reported and observational log data to understand students' study approach [21][22][23][24]. The present investigation will adopt Student Approaches to Learning research as a theoretical framework and will use both self-reported and observational log data to examine students' study approaches in flipped classroom courses.…”