The Impact of Group Work on Students’ Online Engagement

Abstract

Online learning has become more prominent since COVID-19 outbreak. As a result, working in a group has been used as an alternative to ensure engagement among students exist even interacting from afar. This study investigates how forming, storming, norming, and performing affect the students' online engagement in learning in a group work context. A set of questionnaires is used and distributed to students from various fields of study who have undergone online learning in a public university in Malaysia. It consists of seven sections: the demographic profile, social interaction, more knowledgeable others, zone of proximal development, learner-to-learner interaction, learner-to-instructor interaction, and learnerto-content interaction. A total of 354 responses are received and recorded. Findings reveal how group work has impacted online engagement by looking at forming, storming, norming, and performing attributes. The study contributes to the literature by focusing on the impacts of group work to achieve engaging online learning. In particular, the study highlights the significant contributions to educators to encourage and motivate learners to be engaged in online group work more comfortably and confidently.

Examining Team Collaboration: A Study Utilising Tuckman’s Framework for Analysis

“…Consequently, these findings suggest that the success of group work will be hampered if these problems are not addressed. However, in another research done on 1399 students in Open Cyber University (OCU) in South Korea shows that even though there is presence of different member characteristics in group work, they found that those group work can still help all of the students involved (Hanafi et al, 2022). Their findings propose that high contributors can gain more input and understanding from teaching while low contributors can acquire more knowledge from the support of other group members.…”