When group work leaves the classroom does group skills development also go out the window?

Abstract

In moving towards what Lemke (1996) terms the 'interactive learning paradigm', higher education has adopted two key principles consistent with group learning technologies:• learning is always mediated by and occurs through language (Falk, 1997;Gee, 1997); and • learning is distributed across a range of other people, sites, objects, technologies and time (Gee, 1997).A third and relatively recent principle to emerge on the higher education scene that seems to 'contradict' accepted views of group learning technologies is that:• many universities now choose to offer 'learning resources' online.This paper asks whether Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are 'robust' enough to support, sustain and address industry, employer and government calls for greater attention to group skills development in university graduates. Data features an examination of respondent feedback (n = 171) in an 'ICT-rich' group work setting, and the subsequent ratings of group skills development over a 13-week period. This discussion offers an account of learner outcomes by adopting Kirkpatrick's (1996) four levels of evaluation of learning as a classification scheme for determining learner satisfaction (Level One), the effectiveness of learning transfer (Level Two), its impact on practice (Level Three) and the appropriation of learning behaviours by participants (Level Four). The contrasting patterns of ICT use between female and male users in the data are discussed in relation to building social presence and producing social categories online. Differences reported here indicate that ICT group work is moving forward, but opportunities to challenge rather than reproduce existing learning relations and differences, remain largely unresolved.

Lurking and L2 Learners on a Facebook Group: The Voices of the Invisibles

“…As a result, the participants were unable to create a community of learning as they failed to connect socially with other learners by appreciating other learners' efforts and respecting the privacy of others. The findings concur with other studies on the importance of effective online communication skills (Johnson & Stanne, 2000;Baskin, Barker, & Woods, 2005;Jahng, Nielsen, & Chan, 2010). The findings supported the findings of the study carried by Hooper and Kalidas (2012) that indicated that the Netiquette depended on the multiple audiences of the Facebook users.…”

Team conflict in ICT‐rich environments: Roles of technologies in conflict management

“…Comparable results were found in a study on the role of ICT in promoting group skills development in graduate students (Baskin, Barker & Woods, 2005). The researchers concluded that ‘while these [technologies] helped to centralise decision‐making processes and exchange of ideas for students, none of these... seemed to directly support convergent group work processes across the sample’ (Baskin et al , 2005, p. 19).…”

Integrating Information Literacy To Enhance Post-graduate Learning

“…The importance of clarity in project design so that students know what is expected of them is reinforced by other researchers (Baskin, Barker and Woods, 2005;Baldwin and Keating, 1998). From the perspective of action learning, however, there are also lessons to be learnt about cultivating independent attitudes to learning.…”