Collaborative Learning: Students’ Perspectives on How Learning Happens

Collaborative learning (CL), a core component of inquiry-based learning approaches, aims to support students’ development of key skills (e.g., working in multidisciplinary teams). To design effective CL activities, we need to understand students’ perceptions about CL. However, few studies have examined students’ understandings of CL. This qualitative study aimed to address this gap by analyzing participants’ constructions of their CL experiences. Focus group data (14 first- and 14 fourth-year dental student volunteers) were analyzed by an inductive thematic analysis strategy. The findings explained students’ perspectives of key factors for facilitating positive learning within an inquiry-based CL context, namely having a “right” mix of students and facilitating balanced participation and interactions, especially questioning, explaining, and managing knowledge conflicts and understanding their thinking processes when learning

The Purpose and Value for Students of PBL Groups for Learning

Groups are central to problem-based learning (PBL) and educational and professional outcomes relevant to clinical education. However, PBL groups in practice may differ from theoretical conceptions of groups. Therefore, this study explored students’ understandings of the purpose and value of PBL groups for their learning. We conducted a naturalistic study with novice (first-year) students at two dental schools (Australia, Ireland), using observation and interviews analyzed thematically. Students constructed PBL learning as individual knowledge gain, and group purpose as information gathering and exchange; few students acknowledged the learning potential of group processes. Group value depended on assessment and curriculum context. Findings are explained in relation to how students’ epistemologies and perceptions of their learning contexts shaped group behaviour. Implications for health professional education practice are considered

Another Piece of the “Silence in PBL” Puzzle: Students’ Explanations of Dominance and Quietness as Complementary Group Roles

A problem-based learning (PBL) assumption is that silence is incompatible with collaborative learning. Although sociocultural studies have reinterpreted silence as collaborative, we must understand how silence occurs in PBL groups. This essay presents students’ explanations of dominance, leadership, and silence as PBL group roles. An ethnographic investigation of PBL groups, informed by social constructionism, was conducted at two dental schools (in Australia and Ireland). The methods used were observation, interviews, and focus groups. The participants were volunteer first-year undergraduates. Students attributed dominance, silence, and members’ group roles to personal attributes. Consequently, they assumed that groups divided naturally into dominant leaders and silent followers. Sometimes silence had a collaborative learning function, but it was also due to social exclusion. This assumption enabled social practices that privileged some group members and marginalized others. Power and participation in decision making in PBL groups was restricted to dominant group members

The interpreted curriculum: students’ constructions of problem-based learning groups.

In this thesis, I address the meaning of problem-based learning (PBL) groups for students. The group is generally a core element of PBL. Theoretical conceptions of the ideal PBL group have ranged from it being a setting for individual knowledge development to it being a site for students' professional enculturation. However, PBL research from diverse theoretical perspectives has produced results about groups that are not consistent with theoretical conceptions of groups. Research has also demonstrated that students interpret PBL differently to theoretical and curriculum conceptions of PBL, hence the notion of 'interpreted curriculum'. These findings raise the issue of how students interpret PBL groups and the implications this has for practice. My study addressed this aspect of the interpreted curriculum via the following research questions: What is the nature of a PBL group for students? What is the purpose and value of a PBL group for students? Informed by social constructionist theory, the study was a qualitative investigation based on an ethnographic approach, employing observation and interviewing to collect data. The participants were volunteer first-year undergraduate dental students in Adelaide, Australia and Dublin, Ireland. The thesis contributes to knowledge about PBL groups and provides recommendations for practice. It explains how students understood PBL group structure, dynamics and function, and how they understood work and learning in relation to PBL and the group. In response to the research questions, I found that, for students, the nature of the PBL group was primarily social, with its success related to the personality mix of group members and the subsequent roles and relationships. The group purpose in PBL was to do the work of gathering knowledge, which then supplemented the private learning efforts of individual members, which was constructed as taking in knowledge. In both Dental Schools, the value of the group was to provide social, emotional, and academic support to students, although learning support varied in each School according to the curriculum and assessment structure. Based on students' explanations, I describe a student ideal group and develop my account of the interpreted curriculum by comparing this group to a theoretical ideal group. While the student group was socially driven and separated work and learning, the theoretical group was primarily a work group that integrated work and learning. To account for this, I explain that students constructed PBL groups with a conceptual framework that was inconsistent with the conceptual foundation of the theoretical PBL group. The wider contribution of this thesis is to illustrate that students operated with explicit and implicit understandings that were counter to the theoretical principles on which PBL groups were based and designed, and that this had ramifications for group function. The recommendations for practice take account of these differences, and aim to help students to establish PBL groups that function on the model of a professional team. The recommendations are designed to assist students to develop their concepts of teams, knowledge, and learning, and to enhance students’ personal, professional, and academic development through participation in PBL groups.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Dentistry, 201

Interactional research in PBL: Another piece of the \u27silence in PBL\u27 puzzle: Students\u27 explanations of dominance and quietness as complementary group roles

A problem-based learning (PBL) assumption is that silence is incompatible with collaborative learning. Although sociocultural studies have reinterpreted silence as collaborative, we must understand how silence occurs in PBL groups. This essay presents students’ explanations of dominance, leadership, and silence as PBL group roles. An ethnographic investigation of PBL groups, informed by social constructionism, was conducted at two dental schools (in Australia and Ireland). The methods used were observation, interviews, and focus groups. The participants were volunteer first-year undergraduates. Students attributed dominance, silence, and members’ group roles to personal attributes. Consequently, they assumed that groups divided naturally into dominant leaders and silent followers. Sometimes silence had a collaborative learning function, but it was also due to social exclusion. This assumption enabled social practices that privileged some group members and marginalized others. Power and participation in decision making in PBL groups was restricted to dominant group members

A fixed interval schedule in which the interval is initiated by a response

The fixed interval schedule described requires the animal to initiate every time interval by making a response on a bar other than the one on which it is reinforced. This response, R(A), demarcates the postreinforcement pause (S(R)-R(A) interval) from the fixed interval pause (R(A)-R(B) interval) so that these pauses may be measured separately. Twelve rats and three monkeys, working in two-bar Skinner boxes, were trained and stabilized on this schedule. The resulting performances, presented for individual animals, are analyzed in terms of (1) the relative frequencies with which the animal waits various lengths of time between consecutive responses, (2) the relative frequencies with which various rates of responding appear, (3) the change in response rate throughout the fixed interval, (4) the average length of the postreinforcement pause, (5) the relative frequencies with which the animal waits different lengths of time between the R(A) and the first R(B), and (6) the average inter-response time as a function of the rank order in the fixed interval of the inter-response time. The joint interpretation of the several measures taken leads to the following conclusions: 1. The probability of an R(B) increases throughout the fixed interval. 2. The increase is discontinuous at the first R(B), at which point the probability increases sharply. 3. The frequency distributions of R(A)-R(B) pauses exhibit three discrete types of behavior with no intermediate cases. 4. The (main) mode of R(A)-R(B) interval length usually occurs just below the fixed interval requirement

Prepositional phrases spoken and heard

The relation between verbal and nonverbal behavior with common syntactic properties was investigated, using retarded and nonretarded children. Reinforcement was contingent on either verbal or nonverbal responses whereas responses of the other repertoire had no experimental consequences. Changes sometimes occurred in the unreinforced (collateral) repertoire, but they were always changes in the stimulus control of pre-existing topographies. A contingency involving responses of one repertoire never instated new topographies in the collateral repertoire. This suggested that the problem of “cross-modality generalization” should be reformulated to distinguish explicitly between instating new topographies and changing the stimulus control of pre-existing topographies. The result confirmed Skinner's hypothesis about “the same response spoken and heard” and clarified some anomalies in previous studies