Research Results

While you read this section , please think about and comment upon:

1. What do you think the researchers could have done to ensure more student participated actively in the problem collaboration?
2. What aspects of the course were most motivational to the students, why?

Critique: Outcomes

The research yielded a large amount of data, and the writers present this in five sections. Although both qualitative and quantitative research methods were applied we only see the quantitative results displayed. As mentioned earlier the lack of information on the research methodology also results here in a lack of clarity as to how the interview schedule was developed. We don’t know the questions and thus it’s hard for us to know the validity of the responses other than take the authors’ word.

It’s apparent from this section that the problem-solving approach was largely a success and the feedback positive. Other useful data showed the time differences spent on the task and the overall comfort level with the technology. The choice of developing ‘guide questions’ to cover the curriculum seems sensible, however, as I’ll discuss this choice could have a longer term effect on student motivation on higher-order thinking activities.

Its seems from the results, like in any group of students it has to be said, that intrinsically motivated individuals with a mastery orientation (Schunk, et al., 2002) were prepared to put time and effort into the collaborative tasks, whereas less motivated learners relied on others or did the minimum to pass the course.

Although the writer broke this part down into research sections, it may have benefited them to synthesize some of the results across these sections. For example they conflate motivation with enjoyment in the final section but is enjoyment a signifier of the success of a program? On an affective level research suggests this helps motivation, and social constructivist theories also suggest that collaboration in tasks supports learning and aspects of affect (Schunk, 2012). In spite of this the students here rated the collaboration and peer reviews slightly negatively and rated the less cognitively heavy tasks higher (weekly assessment tasks).

I think this is one of the most interesting aspects of this research: the fact that the writers believe collaboration and peer work will have a positive effect on higher order learning, yet at the same time these tasks are rated lower than lower-order thinking tasks by the students. Encompassing this dichotomy is the result that suggests students believe the personal skills of metacognition, literacy and self-regulation they get from the higher-order thinking activities are beneficial.

So does the collaborative, reflective, peer assessed approach truly help in learning or does it have a comparatively bigger effect on personal, lifelong skills development? Thus the content focus versus outcome focus mentioned earlier may need to be re-framed as the outcomes are not predicted expected by the process.

Ultimately no results are displayed to support whether this approach achieve better learning outcomes. I don’t see an assessment except for class discussions and student self-perception.