Perceptions of online group work Vic Nicholas Nick

Perceptions of online group work Vic Nicholas, Nick Braithwaite, Sarah Chyriwsky, Dave Edwards and Mark Hirst

Outline ●Origin and context ●Research Questions and methods ●Initial work ●Findings ●Where next? 2

Origin and context: background ●This work originated from an e. STEe. M project on student perception of online group work at L 1 (forum and Elluminate). An unexpected finding was negative comments about group work. “the only problem was having to rely on other people” “people were late” “everyone was being too polite and deadlines got pushed back, it got messy” ●SX*288 students had to contribute to an interdisciplinary online project as part of their EMA. ●Lots of useful literature about group working online: Haresnape, Janet (2015). Student perceptions of an assessed, online, collaborative activity. Practitioner Research in Higher Education, 9(1) pp. 18– 37. Robinson, Kathy (2013). The interrelationship of emotion and cognition when students undertake collaborative group work online: an interdisciplinary approach. Computers and Education, 62 pp. 298– 307 . 3

Origin and context: SX*288 12 B, 13 B & 14 B ● Students on five different themes of SX*288 study in their themes for 26 weeks. For the final 8 weeks they are mixed into new interdisciplinary project groups. 12 B 13 B 14 B Number of students 358 600 934 Number Average of teams team size 36 68 103 10 9 9 ●Each team had roles of editor, time keeper etc ●Each presentation had a different project 4

Origin and Context: Project Geocardigia: Exploring habitibility ‘’Propose investigations for this imagined scenario’’ 5

Origin and context: Team Report Typical output of final project Collaborative project output from a single team of 6 -10 students. 6

Origin and Context Reflections on their team: EMA questions (25%) ● What were the benefits and drawbacks of working on this problem as a team? Provide evidence of these benefits and drawbacks (200 – 300 words. ) ● Consider your own learning on this module. As a result of this experience, what advice would you give to anyone considering undertaking a teamworking project? (300 – 400 words. ) ● If you had the opportunity to do the project again with the same people/resources/time what would you do differently and why? (100 – 150 words. ) 7

Questions ● How were the tools we provided for collaborative work used? • Forums, Wikis and OULive (Elluminate) • Do they help or do they hinder ? • Do they use others ? [Google. Docs, Email, Doodle. Poll] ● Student Perceptions ● What obstacles do they report ? ● Did students see the benefits of team working? ● Can we develop common themes for thematic analysis of larger cohorts ? 8

Example of team forum activity New Discussions: 2483 Replies: 26 859 n = 600 students 13 B Presentation 151 subscribed to their EMA forum (all posts) 37 to between 1 -15 specific discussions) -31. 3% subscribe. 9

Initial work and research methods ●Random sub-set of 35 SX*288 EMA scripts from 14 B were analysed by two ALs with experience on the module (Sarah Chyriwsky and Dave Edwards) ●Looked for themes that emerged from the reflection questions and each wrote a report ●Vic and Mark read through these reports independently and pulled out common themes ●Nvivo analysis on a further 15 EMAs (from all presentations) 10

Findings: Common Themes ‘I think this was one of those instances where the difficulty in communicating became apparent; it’s a lot more difficult trying to figure things out and communicate online than when working in a group who are all in the same room…. . ’ Communication online (18/33) 11

Findings: Common Themes ●Knowledge of team members ●Time management ●Sharing workload ●Personalities ●Communication online ●Shared Expertise & Skills ●Team greater than its parts ●Roles within the team ●Team set-up 12

Findings: Similar themes Kathy Robinson (2013) 35/40 students surveyed used at least one of these terms Autonomy: Things that are beyond their own control, dependence upon other group members’ participation, skills and experience and on the technology Virtual others: working with team members that you have never met F 2 F using only e-communications Communicating online: Impacts on progress and achievement (delays, gaps etc) Reflections on collaborative work: Expressing their perspective about the value of collaborative learning. 13

Findings: Recognising the Benefits ● People bring different strengths (KU, expertise) ● Division of labour ● Learn about other approaches to science ● Learn about other approaches to report writing ● Support team members less able to contribute ● Motivation to not let the team down ● Increased self confidence 14

Upon Reflection: What students say helps…. . ●Start team work promptly ●Project prompts ●Participating regularly ●Communicating well ● Forum threads: short with clear subjects ● Posting summaries ●Being clear about availability ●Elluminate: good for brainstorming and real time discussions ●Email good for prompting ● Forum subscription ? 15

Summary • The obstructions and difficulties are very apparent during the team working activity • Students do see benefits upon reflection End of module reflection (14 B) (Marcus Brodeur Ph. D project) Over the course of completing the four topics of SXHL 288, what improvement would you say you’ve had in your ability to work collaboratively 45 57% major or profound improvement in ability to work collaboratively 40 35 % of responses 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Negligible Minor Average Major Profound n=236 16

Next stages Deeper dives using themes Specific activity groups • High/low Elluminate • High/Low Forum All members of a team What we hope to get from it: • How we create teams • How to develop team working skills • Nature of the team task Thanks: Shailey Minocha & Marcus Brodeur 17

Basic slides on the cohort 18

Team size and Forum Traffic N = 81 teams 38 357 posts Mean +/- SD 19

Obstructions provided by us Forums: Number of posts, inflexibility of forum threads (edit/split/merge) Elluminate: technical issues, microphone use Wiki: limited editing access 20

Forum use and Elluminate activity No association between Elluminate use and Forum activity (S 288 13 B Presentation) 1200 342 Team-based (student led and organised) Elluminate sessions 1000 Total forum posts 800 600 400 200 0 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 Number of recorded Elluminate sesions 21

Common themes From Sarah’s analysis of 35 EMA reflections ●How collaboration worked at different stages ●Initial perceptions of group work ●Structure of the team and how it functions ●Benefits and obstacles of team work ●Participation – big groups and personalities ●Assessment criteria ●Trust ●How technology helps or hinders ●What they did to make it work ●What they didn’t do but recognised would have been good! 22