Assessing an effective collaboration in higher education: A study of students’ experiences and challenges on group collaboration

Studies emphasize that collaboration remains an essential part of learning and working in the 21st century. This study seeks to report on the group collaboration of higher education students. Using Explanatory sequential mixed method design, this study tried to discuss the students’ experiences and challenges on group collaboration environment in the online learning cases. Adopting Razmerita and Kirchner's (2014) questionnaire, 287 students involved in this study. The result indicated that overall students performed positive perception on group collaboration. In addition, to have deep analysis, 15 students were interviewed. This study contributes to an understanding of how students perceived collaboration and how they explain the obstacles recognized in their classes.DOI: 10.26905/enjourme.v6i2.6971

Automated Student Group Collaboration Assessment and Recommendation System Using Individual Role and Behavioral Cues

Early development of specific skills can help students succeed in fields like Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Different education standards consider “Collaboration” as a required and necessary skill that can help students excel in these fields. Instruction-based methods is the most common approach, adopted by teachers to instill collaborative skills. However, it is difficult for a single teacher to observe multiple student groups and provide constructive feedback to each student. With growing student population and limited teaching staff, this problem seems unlikely to go away. Development of machine-learning-based automated systems for student group collaboration assessment and feedback can help address this problem. Building upon our previous work, in this paper, we propose simple CNN deep-learning models that take in spatio-temporal representations of individual student roles and behavior annotations as input for group collaboration assessment. The trained classification models are further used to develop an automated recommendation system to provide individual-level or group-level feedback. The recommendation system suggests different roles each student in the group could have assumed that would facilitate better overall group collaboration. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to develop such a feedback system. We also list the different challenges faced when working with the annotation data and describe the approaches we used to address those challenges.

Reablement professionals’ perspectives on client characteristics and factors associated with successful home-based reablement: a qualitative study

Background To understand what is needed to achieve a successful Danish home-based reablement service from the perspective of reablement professionals. Methods Semi-structured interviews and observations were conducted with nine professionals within a municipal visitation unit in the Northern Denmark Region. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the interviews. Results Four major themes emerged during this study: “Heterogeneity of clients and mixed attitudes towards the reablement intervention”, “Shared understanding and acknowledging the need for help as the first step in reablement”, “Commitment and motivation are essential for successful reablement”, and “Homecare helpers as most important team players”. The findings indicate that the clients had both mixed characteristics and attitudes about participating in the reablement intervention. Essential factors for successful reablement included a shared understanding of the reablement intervention, commitment, and motivation in terms of client involvement and staff group collaboration. Conclusions Shared understanding of the reablement intervention, commitment, and motivation was found to be essential factors and the driving forces in relation to successful reablement.

Effects of smartphone-based collaborative vlog projects on EFL learners’ speaking performance and learning engagement

This study examined how smartphone-based collaborative video projects influenced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ speaking performance and learning engagement using blended learning in China. The collaborative video projects helped students engage in two smartphone-based video filming tasks to combine language learning with real-life experiences simultaneously. A total of 65 college students used smartphones to participate in 3-minute collaborative video tasks that were related to the learning context of the classroom textbook. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected during this 8-week intervention. This included pretest and post-test speaking scores, a questionnaire on group collaboration, students’ final reflections and focus group interviews. A paired-sample t test, descriptive analysis and qualitative content analysis were used to analyse the data. The results indicate that students’ speaking abilities were significantly improved at the end of the intervention. They enjoyed group collaboration in the video projects and appreciated acquiring digital media production skills. Interview results highlight the opportunities for and challenges of the educational application of video projects in EFL classrooms. Implications for practice or policy: Integrating collaborative vlog projects in EFL classrooms can stimulate students’ speaking performance. Student-made collaborative vlogs can help students develop 21st century skills, especially in digital media production. Smartphone-based vlog projects can increase learners’ engagement and enhance their group collaboration skills.