Unstructured Collaboration Versus Individual Practice for Complex Problem Solving: A Cautionary Tale

Yetter, Georgette; Gutkin, Terry B.; Saunders, Anita; Galloway, Ann M.; Sobansky, Robin R.; Song, Samuel Y.

doi:10.3200/jexe.74.2.137-160

Cited by 17 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Finally, being interactive , by and large, is better than being constructive when partners are truly interactive (as opposed to participating in self‐construction only), because they can benefit from each other’s contributions . This prediction is consistent with the literature on collaboration, showing that even though a majority of collaborative learning studies find learning advantages compared with individual learning, some studies do not obtain such advantages (Barron, 2003; Yetter et al, 2006). This latter finding might be explained by the fact that some dialogue patterns are in fact not interactive at all.…”

Section: A Hypothesis Generated From This Taxonomy and Evidence Insupporting

confidence: 91%

Active‐Constructive‐Interactive: A Conceptual Framework for Differentiating Learning Activities

Michelene

2009

Topics in Cognitive Science

1,123

973

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Active, constructive, and interactive are terms that are commonly used in the cognitive and learning sciences. They describe activities that can be undertaken by learners. However, the literature is actually not explicit about how these terms can be defined; whether they are distinct; and whether they refer to overt manifestations, learning processes, or learning outcomes. Thus, a framework is provided here that offers a way to differentiate active, constructive, and interactive in terms of observable overt activities and underlying learning processes. The framework generates a testable hypothesis for learning: that interactive activities are most likely to be better than constructive activities, which in turn might be better than active activities, which are better than being passive. Studies from the literature are cited to provide evidence in support of this hypothesis. Moreover, postulating underlying learning processes allows us to interpret evidence in the literature more accurately. Specifying distinct overt activities for active, constructive, and interactive also offers suggestions for how learning activities can be coded and how each kind of activity might be elicited.

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Section: A Hypothesis Generated From This Taxonomy and Evidence Insupporting

confidence: 91%

Active‐Constructive‐Interactive: A Conceptual Framework for Differentiating Learning Activities

Michelene

2009

Topics in Cognitive Science

1,123

973

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“…Επίσης, μπορεί κατά την επίλυση του προβλήματος οι μαθητές να ένιωσαν απογοήτευση από την προσπάθειά τους να συνεργαστούν και, έτσι, να μείωσαν την προσπάθειά τους να το λύσουν. Ίσως, αν το πρόβλημα ήταν ευκολότερο, οι μαθητές να είχαν περισσότερο χρόνο να το επεξεργαστούν και να συνεργαστούν (Yetter, Gutkin, Saunders, Galloway, Sobansky, & Song, 2006).…”

Section: σύγκριση ατομικής ικανότητας επίλυσης προβλήματος μονάδων καunclassified

Η Επίδραση της Γνωστικής Ανάπτυξης στη Συνεργατική Επίλυση Προβλήματος με τη χρήση του γρίφου Sudoku σε Μαθητές Στ΄ Δημοτικού

Eleftheriou

Christodoulou

2018

Ppej

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Collaborative learning is a subject that has occupied many researchers throughout the world. Many researchers have maintained that when students of all school stages, from kindergarten to higher education work in teams, this leads to high performance (Johnson, Skon, & Johnson, 1980), but also has a positive impact emotionally and psychologically (Schmitz & Winskel, 2008). However, there have been studies claiming that teamwork does not actually result in any substantive improvement in students’ efficiency (Samuelsson, 2010), or that only some students gain from this method of learning (Sears & Reagin, 2013). The present study explores how cognitive development relates to problem solving in pairs or individually, in students of the sixth grade in school using the numerical puzzle Sudoku. More specifically, the study explored four different types of pairs of two, according to the level of cognitive development (high – high, high – low, average – average and low – low) and three different types of units (high, average, low), all taken from sixth graders of a public elementary school. Additionally, the research studied whether solving Sudoku was more effective in pairs rather than individually. The sample of this research included thirteen sixth grade classes from a public elementary school in a city in Cyprus. The city was intentionally selected to facilitate the research. Two hundred twenty students completed the tool of cognitive development Group Assessment of Logical Thinking (GALT). Then, 60 students individually solved the Sudoku puzzle, while 160 students solved the puzzle in pairs. The results of the qualitative study showed that there were differences between the four types of pairs in terms of how they collaborated. Although students showed interest or even enthusiasm in solving the Sudoku puzzle, the majority of them did not work together so as to improve their performance. The results of the quantitative study confirmed that students failed to cooperate. The performance of the Individual Problem Solving Ability was not different among the four types of pairs. The majority of high-level cognitive development pairs started to solve the puzzle competitively. However, in the process they worked together to solve the puzzle correctly. They also behaved in an intensely self-centred way. In non-homogeneous pairs, low-performing students had a passive role in the group. Additionally, it seemed that the level of cooperation was related to high performance. The research demonstrated that students had difficulty in developing combinational thinking. This was the reason they could not solve the puzzle. Pairs did not cooperate, despite the fact that they had clear guidelines to do that. This finding should be a concern for teachers and the educational system of Cyprus, in general. The role of the teacher should be supportive in helping students overcome their difficulties, considering the theory of Vygotsky (2012) on systematic facilitating, development, and the Zone of Proximal Development.

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“…Many studies have shown the superiority of peer‐assisted learning (PAL) over individual learning (IL) in both experimental and applied settings (e.g., Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 2014; Kam, Wang, Iles, Tse, Chiu, Glaser, Tarshish, & Canny, 2005; Menekse, Stump, Krause, & Chi, 2013; van Boxtel, van der Linden, & Kanselaar, 2000). However, this superiority is not always observed and it varies with a number of factors (Yetter et al., 2006). It is postulated to be larger in intellectually demanding tasks (Laughlin, Zander, Knievel, & Tan, 2003) that involve coconstruction of knowledge, where multiple learners contribute new knowledge and insights, which in turn increase the knowledge of each contributor, making them more likely to contribute more new knowledge, and so on, creating positive feedback loops or knowledge spillover effects (Chalioti, 2019; Chi & Wylie, 2014; Cooper & Kagel, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peer‐Assisted Learning Is More Effective at Higher Task Complexity and Difficulty

Carson,

Juvina,

O'Neill

et al. 2023

Topics in Cognitive Science

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This paper presents two studies in which a peer‐assisted learning condition was compared to an individual learning condition. The first study used the paired‐associates learning task and the second study used an incrementally more complex task—the remote associate test. Participants in the peer‐assisted learning condition worked in groups of four. They had to solve a given problem individually and give a first answer before being able to request to see their peers’ solutions; then, a second answer was issued. After six sessions of peer‐assisted practice, a final individual test was administered. Peer interaction was found to benefit learning in both studies but the benefit transferred to the final test only in the second study. Fine‐grained behavioral analyses and computational modeling suggested that the benefits of peer interaction were (partially) offset by its costs, particularly increased cognitive load and error exposure. Overall, the superiority of peer‐assisted learning over individual learning was more pronounced in the more complex task and for the more difficult problems in that task.

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Unstructured Collaboration Versus Individual Practice for Complex Problem Solving: A Cautionary Tale

Cited by 17 publications

References 29 publications

Active‐Constructive‐Interactive: A Conceptual Framework for Differentiating Learning Activities

Active‐Constructive‐Interactive: A Conceptual Framework for Differentiating Learning Activities

Η Επίδραση της Γνωστικής Ανάπτυξης στη Συνεργατική Επίλυση Προβλήματος με τη χρήση του γρίφου Sudoku σε Μαθητές Στ΄ Δημοτικού

Peer‐Assisted Learning Is More Effective at Higher Task Complexity and Difficulty

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