Results and Findings

Counts of groupwork and individual work

Answers to question "In how many courses have you had to mainly work in a group?"

and "In how many courses have you had to mainly work individually?"

There were more courses required mainly groupwork than courses required mainly individual work.

Group Size

74.2% of participants believed group of 3-4 is the ideal group size from their experiences. 16.1% of participants chose group of 2, and 9.7% of participants agreed group of 5-6 is ideal.

Why:

The limitation of pairs is: if the task is a challenging one requiring different and multiple intellectual abilities and other skills, some pairs might not have adequate resources, skills and ideas to complete the task (Cohen& Lotan, 2014).
As the group gets larger, arranging times and places for group meetings and activities becomes more and more difficult. Larger groups decrease each members opportunity to participate and often results in some members not actively contributing to the group(Burke, 2011).

Suggestion:

Group of 3-4 is recommended.

Group Work Preferences

5: strongly agree 4: agree 3: neither agree nor disagree 2: disagree 1: strongly disagree

Some participants shared the reason behind their choices:

Results of Group Work Features

5: strongly agree 4: agree 3: neither agree nor disagree 2: disagree 1: strongly disagree

Groupwork features and students’ groupwork preference relationship

Open-ended task and even power in groups have moderate negative relationship. r(29)=.407, p<.05.
Enough instructions and even power in groups have moderate positive relationship. r(29)=.393, p<.05
Enough instructions and groupwork preference have large positive relationship. r(29)=.555, p<.01

The nature of task has an impact on group power status. Inequalities in interaction and a status order will emerge when the task is very open and uncertain.

Enough instructions and information have a positive effect on group power status and students’ group work preference. When students have enough instructions and information, they are more likely to contribute evenly and they are more likely to prefer groupwork.

Why?

Students who are disengaged from their work in the classroom are often students who do not understand the assignments.
Finding the delicate balance between uncertainty that is productive and sparks creativity and uncertainty that is debilitating and leads to insurmountable confusion is a challenge(Cohen & Lotan, 2014).

Suggestions:

Make sure every student understand their assignments.
Keep the uncertainty of task at a suitable level, to spark creativity and to avoid confusion.
During groupwork, when teachers are no longer the “sage on the stage”, they remain “a guide on the side”, who give clear instructions and build a supportive learning environment for every student.

Results of Students' engagement

5: strongly agree 4: agree 3: neither agree nor disagree 2: disagree 1: strongly disagree

Overall Students' Engagement

We focused on three aspects of student engagement: academic engagement, cognitive engagement, social engagement with peers and teachers.

The results are summarized here.

Participants' cognitive and academic engagement levels are relevantly high. Engagement with peers and teachers vary a lot between students.

5: strongly agree 4: agree 3: neither agree nor disagree 2: disagree 1: strongly disagree

Cognitive Engagement

Students enjoy the intellectual challenge of courses studying because they feel it stimulating. They also get a lot of satisfaction from studying and feel motivated to study.

Academic engagement

Students regularly study in the weekend, tend to spent a lot of time studying and rarely skip classes.

Students often come to class having completed readings or assignments.

Engagement with Teachers

Students believe that teachers make an effort to understand their difficulties. They think teachers are helpful and interested in their progress. They find teachers' feedbacks helpful and think that teachers are usually available to discuss their work.

Engagement with Peers

Students regularly work with friends when they have problem.

They often discuss courses together and feel part of a group of students which committed learning

Groupwork features and students’ engagement level relationship

Open-ended task and academic engagement have large positive relationship. r(29)=.514, p<.01
Groupwork preference and social engagement with peers have moderate positive relationship. r(29)=.430, p<.05

The groupwork preference is a factor strongly related to social engagement with peers. Students who have more positive attitude towards groupwork, tend to work and study with other students more often and are more likely to feel part of a group of students committed to learning. Or students who regularly study and work with others, and will be more likely to prefer groupwork.

When the tasks that are open-end, productively uncertain, and require complex problem solving, students will be more likely to spend a lot time on study and assignment.

Why? A group worthy task provides opportunities for students to access the instructions and the information required to engage in the task, facilitates equal-status participation, and allows students to demonstrate the multiple intellectual abilities and the different academic and social skills they use to complete the task successfully(Cohen & Lotan, 2014).

Why?

There might be an interesting third factor mediating these two factors we measured: students’ personality. Past research(Forrester & Tashchian, 2010) has shown that individuals with high extroversion scores had positive attitudes toward academic group work. Extroversion people are more likely to enjoy participating in group work. They were engaged and tended to learn more in groupwork setting than from lectures alone.

Suggestions:

Use open-ended, uncertain, complex tasks to promote students' academic engagement.
Seek a balance of groupwork and individual work to meet different students' need.

Learn more about problem based learning and groupwork.