Approaches to Group Work in an Online Course

A Framework for Looking at Group Work in Asynchronous Online CoursesDr. Susan LowesTeachers College/Columbia UniversityAugust 2012

BackgroundiNACOL standards:The teacher plans, designs and incorporates strategies to encourage active learning, interaction, participation and collaboration in the online environment.Of the fifteen elements in that standard, three refer to student-student interaction: Facilitating interaction among studentsEngaging students in team problem-solving Promoting learning through group interaction

Goals of this researchTo look at groups working online and ask:How do groups manage themselves in an online environment? How is knowledge collectively built? How do groups establish common frames of reference, resolve discrepancies in understanding, and come to a joint understanding?What do such 21st-century skills as critical thinking and teamwork look like in online environment?To take analytical approaches from f2f group work and see how/if they adapt to analyzing group work onlineTo contribute to the design of online learning that leads to high levels of engagement and critical thinking

3Have not done all of this, for reasons that will become apparentbut even what have done has lessons for instructional designLooking at context and at evolution of conversationsSite of this researchA series of one- and two-year courses offered online by the International Baccalaureate (IB)

through VHS

More than one section of the same courseVirtual classroom model with emphasis on various types of student-student interaction

MethodologyDiscourse analysis, based on work by Brigid Barron in analyzing problem-solving in f2f classroomsThree styles of working together:Parallel interactionAssociative interactionCooperative interactionFour responses for reactions to initial proposals:AcceptAsk for clarificationElaborateReject

5Based on research with TC graduate students on a series of 00 IB online coursesOur adaptationsWe found that the problem-solving style of the group depended in part on the design of the activity, so we looked at both, and at how/if they were linkedWe found that we needed to look at the way a proposal was initiated as well as the response:AskingTelling Telling with a question (asking for consent)We found we need to add a category that we called course correction, which was generally the facilitator but could be a student

Types of problem-solving styles

Parallel collaborationNo monitoring of others contributionsNo interchange of ideasFinal product is cumulation of individual contributions

8From Gilly Salmon?? Types of collaboration:DialoguePeer reviewParallel collaborationSequential collaborationSynergistic collaboration

Associative collaborationSome monitoring of others contributionsSome interchange of ideasFinal product is still a cumulation of individual contributions

Synergistic collaborationMonitoring of others contributionsInterchange of ideasFinal project jointly created

Design of group activities

11Comes from interviews with dozens of online teachers, including many VHS teachers, from looking at current and past IB online coursesCumulationsDevelop dictionaries, bibliographies, glossaries, timelines, family treesTasks are simultaneousNo necessary order of contributionsNo necessary endNo need for interactionNo coordination necessary

Jig-saw projectsEach student works on one pieceStudents may have rolesTasks may be serial or simultaneous All pieces are needed to create the wholeBUT some jigsaw projects are really coordinated cumulative projects

13Interviews with teachers about what has worked well in collaborative learning, primarily group projects

Finding #1There are actually two sets of activities that demand problem-solving stylesProblem-solving styles for working together as a groupProblem-solving styles for responding to the content of the assignmentA groups style may differ for each

Finding #2Groups that successfully completed the task initiated the process by TellingGroups that successful completed the task responded by AcceptingGroups that successfully completed therefore:Used an associative style for organizing themselvesBUT THENUsed a parallel style for getting the work doneThere was almost no use of a synergistic style, except occasionally between two students

15Only once or twice did we find synergistic discussion within a project and that was always between two studentsFinding #3This was partly because the designer believed the activity necessitated synergistic collaboration, BUT the students were able to (and did) use a parallel or associative style

Finding #4Orderly turn-taking, which organizes coordination in f2f conversations, is difficult in online environmentViolations of turn-taking include overlapping posts, posts to previous threads, private and public threadsThis was because students were in different time zones and therefore online at different timesAnd because of the constraints of Blackboard

Finding #5Group work online calls for different 21st century skills than group work f2fKey complaints for f2f group work:Too much socializing: not an issue onlineFreeloaders: a big issue onlineBossy leaders: a strength onlineThe only groups that completed the tasks had one student who took charge, assigned tasks (Telling), asked for agreement--always granted (Accepting), and then collected the work at the end

18Those who took on this rolestarted the process--took overall responsibility and were the ones who submitted the final projectThose groups that started by asking questions of each other never finishedthey got all wrapped up in waiting for each other to agree

Implications for instructional designersSeparations in time and distance mean that the design of group activities cannot be serial but must be simultaneousIf designers want group projects to be synergistic, they need to design them so that the problem-solving style cannot be parallelIf students are really to hash out things together, they need time, so group projects should last more than a week but should be scaffolded so that the students dont wait until the last minute to do the work

19Implications for facilitators/teachersGroups need to be small because asynchronous coordination across time and space is difficultStudents need specific instructions for how to work in groups online because f2f strategies do not workFreeloading is the biggest issue and students need to know what to do if a student doesnt show upActing as a boss is necessary and needs no apology; one person should be assigned as boss for each project/week/task, etc.Critical thinking happens in one-to-one exchanges, not many-to-many or even one-to-many so encourage peer interactions

20they parcel out the work and then spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make up the missing pieceStudents who tried to negotiate the organization of the tasks collaboratively never got organizedStudents need to be told that it is okay to be bossy as long as the role changesparticularly girls;

ReferencesBrigid Barron, Achieving Coordination in Collaborative Problem-Solving Groups, The Journal of the Learning Sciences 9 (4), 2000: 403-436.Dazhi Yang, Jennifer Richardson, Brian F. French, James D. Lehman, The Development of a Content Analysis Model for Assessing Students Cognitive Learning in Asynchronous Online Discussions, 2009, manuscript of paper submitted for publication in Educational Technology Research & Development.

Research assistance: Seungoh Paek and Devayani Tirthali, Program in Computers, Communication, Technology, and Education, Teachers College/Columbia University.