To assign or not to assign? Role Taking in Higher Education.

Abstract

The study here presented focus on Role Taking, a collaborative learning strategy considered as effective to support learning and participation. It's aims at exploring students' perceptions about the efficacy of having a role assigned compared to having chosen a role. As such, it was adopted in a university course about "Knowledge Technologies", held during the third year of the undergraduate course for Social and Cultural Educators. 42 voluntary students (M=4; F=38; average age 22) took part into the activities. Divided in groups, students worked around topics concerning educational potentials or issues relating to ICTs. During the activities, students covered a specific role: some of them choose the role, some others had the role assigned from the teacher. Data analysis shows that, in students' opinion, an assigned role is more effective in terms of quality of learning, social dynamics and satisfaction with the experience.

Distance Learning: Rethinking learning design in higher education during the Covid-19 pandemic

“…Several group activity tasks designed for face-to-face learning were initially revised and simplified for clarification by providing informative material and examples of several planning activities in preparation for the creation of significant extracurricular and intracurricular artefacts. Role taking and role rotation (Fabbri, 2020;Sansone et al, 2011; among the group members was retained, as the teachers considered this methodological strategy extremely useful for both the learning process and socialisation. Moreover, role taking, particularly in Distance Learning situations, was deemed a useful scaffolding tool for effective collaborative learning (De Wever et al, 2008;Strijbos & De Laat, 2010).…”

“…Specifically, in this study, it shifted from the measurement of digital and soft skills developed by students through participation in collaborative in-person activities to the identification of students' voices and their considerations about the problems encountered along with the added value of their Distance Learning experience through the following research queries: Using a semi-structured anonymous online qualitative and quantitative questionnaire, created using the Modules format found in the Google Suite, which was administered before and after, responses from 84 attending students (73 females, 11 males, average age: 22 years) were collected and analysed. Originally, the instrument comprised two scales (24-item Likert scale 1:5) on students' self-assessment of soft skills (Fabbri, 2020) and digital skills (Redecker & Punie, 2017). Subsequent to the Covid-19 restrictions and the start of the widespread use of Distance Learning, the instrument was supplemented by four open questions, wherein the potentials and issues of the students' educational experience using Distance Learning were surveyed.…”