Cohort Group Formation
Recommendations
- Diversity. Heterogeneity of groups was highlighted over and again in the research. (We are not aiming to test this)
- Diversity is productive b/c more likely to lead to constructive controversy (Sao Jose de Faria, Liu, Stahl).
- Leads to stronger growth from both higher-performing learners and lower-performing leaners (Sao Jose de Faria).
- PS: Sunstein (Book: Infotopia) also finds better problem solving ability in diverse groups
- VMG: Liu paper contains algorith we may be able to reuse.
- Recommendation:
- Two or three strata
- Focus on one indicator per group
- Level of expertise
- Size.
- Recommendation: Number of learners per group recommended between 3-6 (Liu, Wessner).
- Limitations to the research:
- Groups are studied in formal education settings
- Q: Online groups? VMG: It is for online groups, facilitators are not included in that number. I'd say 6 is a good number (divisible by 2 and 3, which might be useful for scripting)
- Sizes we want to try out:
- Learning style. Learning groups succeed when there's a balance of learning styles on the team (Felder, Liu).
- Recommendation: balance of active and reflective learners.
- Experience level.
- Recommendation. Balance of more and less experienced (Sao Jose de Faria, Stahl).
- PS: Risks (are they really risks? how do we mitigate?):
- more experienced learners feel they are not learning enough themselves
- less experienced learners /rely/ on more experienced learners too much
There are other things we discussed testing in group formation that I didn't find research for.
- Time Zone.
- Non sequitir that builds social presence (but probably wouldn't tell us a whole lot).
- Historical figure I'm most like
- Celebrity I look like is
- PS: I really like those. It might be hard to convince Steve Carson, but unless it's totally silly, I think it helps break down typical barriers to collaboration
- Can you try to come up with one that is "clever" (in the world of people wanting to learn python) ... oh my ...
References
Felder, R.M. & Soloman, B.A. (2004). Index of Learning Styles. http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSdir/styles.htm
page.html. Accessed on 15 June 2012.
Inaba, A. & Supnithi, T. & Ikeda, M. & Mizoguchi, R. & Toyoda, J. (2000). How can we form effective collaborative learning groups? Proceedings of Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (pp. 282-291). Gauthier, G., Frasson, C. and VanLehn, K. (Eds.). Lecture Notes In Computer Science, vol. 1839. Springer-Verlag, London.
Liu, S., Joy, M.S. and Griffiths, N. (2008) Incorporating Learning Styles in a Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Model. In: International Workshop on Cognitive Aspects in Intelligent and Adaptive Web-based Education Systems (CIAWES 2008), 27-31 Oct 2008, Taipei, Taiwan.
Sao Jose de Faria, E. & Adan-Coello, J.M. & Keiji Yamanaka. (2006). Forming groups for collaborative learning in introductory computer programming courses based on students' programming styles: An Empirical Study. Proc. of 36th Annual Conf. on Frontiers in Education (pp.6-11), San Diego, CA, USA
Stahl, G., Koschmann, T., & Suthers, D. (2006). Computer-supported collaborative learning: An historical perspective. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 409-426). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Wessner, M. & Pfister, H. R. (2001). Group formation in computer-supported collaborative learning. Proceedings of GROUP’01 (pp. 24-31). Boulder, Colorado, USA: ACM Press.