Tenured and tenure-track faculty members at institutions of higher education, especially those at Research I institutions, are being asked to do more than ever before. With rapidly changing technology, significant decreases in public funding, the shift toward privately funded research, and the ever increasing expectations of students for an education that adequately prepares them for professional careers, engineering faculty are particularly challenged by the escalating demands on their time. In 1996, the primary accreditation organization for engineering programs (ABET) adopted new criteria that required, among other things, engineering programs to teach students to function on multidisciplinary teams and to communicate effectively. In response, most engineering programs utilize project teams as a strategy for teaching these skills. The purpose of this qualitative study of tenured and tenure track engineering faculty at a Research I institution in the southwestern United States was to explore the variety of ways in which the engineering faculty responded to the demands placed upon them as a result of the increased emphasis on project teams in undergraduate engineering education. Social role theory and organizational climate theory guided the study. Some faculty viewed project teams as an opportunity for students to learn important professional skills and to benefit from collaborative learning but many questioned the importance and feasibility of teaching teamwork skills and had concerns about taking time away from other essential fundamental material such as mathematics, basic sciences and engineering sciences. Although the administration of the College of Engineering articulated strong support for the use of project teams in undergraduate education, the prevailing climate did little to promote significant efforts related to effective utilization of project teams. Too often, faculty were unwilling to commit sufficient time or effort to make project teamwork a truly valuable learning opportunity because those efforts were not perceived to be valuable and were rarely rewarded. Few formal professional development opportunities were available and few incentives were in place to encourage other informal efforts to develop the necessary skills. Those who committed significant effort to project teams were challenged by concerns about team composition, student accountability and assigning individual grades for group teamwork.

ABSTRACT This phenomenological study examines knowledge acquisition and the environmental practices of Shitlhelani community members in relation to the uses and benefits of electricity. Prior to the installation of electricity, the main source of fuel was wood which villagers gathered from the natural vegetation surrounding their village. ESKOM installed electricity to the village in 1985 and 1994, however deforestation of the surrounding area continued. This research study draws primarily on a qualitative research paradigm, using participant observation; semi-structured interviews and document analysis, to investigate the relationship between knowledge and the development of healthy environmental practices. The qualitative research paradigm allows insight into the social context and experiences of the Shitlhelani villagers in order to understand the complexities and diversity of their daily lives. The study’s main findings highlight the need to recognise and value the existence of social networks, and the importance of fostering collaborative learning within communities to achieve collective action. Developing social capital as a framework that supports the process of learning through interaction is necessary if the Shitlhelani villagers wish to develop their community educationally, socially, economically and environmentally.

The ability to collaborate has been identified as an essential learning outcome for the 21st century. However, if group members lack the skills, abilities, and attitudes to work in a team, these groups may work inefficiently or fail to achieve what they set out to do. To achieve success, group members need to engage in productive regulatory processes to manage cognitions, behaviors, motivation, and emotions as needed to attain desired outcomes. One area of regulation that has been underemphasized in collaborative contexts is the regulation of emotions. Therefore, the purpose of this multi-paper dissertation was to examine the emotional experiences of undergraduate students working collaboratively on two online time-limited problem-solving tasks. Using a regulation of learning framework, the research unfolded over four studies drawing from a variety of data sources and building upon one another to explore the socio-emotional aspect of online collaboration. Study 1 (Webster & Hadwin, 2018) provides an overview of students’ emotions and plans for emotion regulation, self-reported during two collaborative tasks, offering an in-the-moment picture of how students feel and how they respond to those feelings. Study 2 (Bakhtiar, Webster, & Hadwin, 2018) consisted of a comparative case study to examine differences in regulation and socio-emotional interactions between two groups with contrasting socio-emotional climates. Findings revealed differences between these groups in terms of planning and preparation; therefore, the final two studies examined emotions and emotion regulation strategies reported during groupwork under different levels of planning and preparation at the individual or group level. Study 3 (Webster & Hadwin, 2019) documented the types of strategies students recalled using individually and as a group to regulate a salient emotion during collaboration and compared strategies between groups who were given different types of collaborative planning support. Finally, Study 4 (Webster, Davis, & Hadwin, 2019) compared emotions, emotion regulation strategies, and evaluations of strategy effectiveness for a purposeful sample of students who were well-prepared versus underprepared for the first of two collaborative working sessions. Four overarching factors emerged from this research as important for productive emotion regulation in online collaboration: (a) planning and preparation, (b) regulating both negative and positive emotions, (c) regulating at both individual and group levels, and (d) providing support for selecting and enacting helpful strategies. With further research, tools and interventions can be improved and utilized to support students to productively regulate in collaborative groups. / Graduate

University Technical College (UTC) schools are academies for 14-19 year olds. They are distinguished by close links to industrial and university partners to encourage vocational learning, particularly in STEM subjects. Currently 50 are open in England, with more in development. Their expansion is a key strategic objective in the government’s 2016 Educational Excellence Everywhere strategy document. This research analyses data collected through students’ perceptions of their experience of the UTC curriculum model in two detailed case studies. The research questions examine how the approach to the delivery of the curriculum enhances learner motivation. Three main factors are identified as supportive to encouraging learner motivation in the UTC schools studied: a strong focus on developing links with business partners to facilitate career progression goals for learners; an intensive, unique curriculum delivery style; rigorous target-setting in a supportive learning environment. This is a curriculum model which supports independent learning, collaborative learning with peers and vertical -group learning on challenging, employer -led projects.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The purpose of this study was to determine whether a match between a participant's learning style and type of online instruction improved learner performance on tests measuring comprehension and retention. Learning style was measured by the Self-Directed Leamer Readiness Scale (SDLRS) and the Grasha-Riechmann Student Learning Style Scale (GRSLSS) and online instruction varied among online courses, recorded online courses, and computer-based tutorials. The setting for the study was a high tech machine vision company in Massachusetts and online users of its products were the participants. Three groups of learners participated in the study: employees, high school students, and customers. All three groups were comprised of engineers or engineering students. All 106 participants completed a survey that measured their preference for self-directed and collaborative learning style with the standard instruments SDLRS and GRSLSS. Participants completed 323 pre- and post-tests for 46 live online courses, recorded online courses, and computer-based tutorials during the data collection phase of the study. Those participants learning in their preferred learning style had the highest mean improvement from pre- to post-tests. Those participants with average or below average scores for self-directed and collaborative learning style showed the least improvement. The results of this study supported the hypothesis that matching the type of activity, collaborative or self-directed, to the learner's preferred learning style improved performance. The study included ten research questions. / 2031-01-01

Learning and memory abilities decline with age; however collaborative learning with a familiar partner has been found to improve older adults’ performance on memory tasks and reduce these age-related differences. However it is unclear whether collaborating with a familiar partner is more beneficial to learning compared with collaborating with a stranger. Similarly, it is unclear whether older adults collaborate similarly with human and computer partners. The aim of this PhD thesis is to understand the role of collaborator identity on collaborative learning, and to investigate whether collaborative learning is as efficient and accurate with a range of learning partners. While collaborative learning is a socially-based memory task, the relationships between collaborative learning and social cognition have not yet been explored. The secondary aim of this thesis is to use experimental collaborative learning paradigms alongside standardised and experimental measures of social cognition to explore whether social cognition accounts for a significant amount of variance in collaborative learning performance with different partners. Two studies compare younger and older adults’ learning with familiar and unfamiliar partners on different collaborative learning paradigms. Two subsequent studies compare older adults’ learning on computerised versions of the collaborative learning tasks with partners they perceive to be humans or computers based on recordings of natural human or synthetic speech respectively. In all studies, measures of social cognition were used to assess whether social abilities affect learning outcomes with different partner types. When comparing older and younger adults’ results, familiarity had no effect on learning or immediate or delayed recall performance. Older adults initially took longer to complete the learning trials but performed with similar efficiency as younger adults by the final trials. Younger and older adults recalled collaboratively learned information with comparable accuracy after a delay of one hour, however after one week, older adults recalled the route less accurately than younger adults. Social cognition was not related to collaborative learning with familiar partners, but was related with unfamiliar partners, suggesting that those who are better able to take the perspective of another person may benefit during interactive learning. Social cognition was related to collaborative learning with perceived human partners but not perceived computer partners. This thesis offers a new perspective on the interplay between social and cognitive function in collaborative learning with different learning partners, and explores the differences between younger and older adults when learning collaboratively. The findings are discussed in relation to cognitive, social, and technological theories. On the whole, collaborative learning can result in older adults learning with similar speed and accuracy to younger adults; while familiarity does not improve learning outcomes, perceived human-ness does.

This thesis examines the work of nonprofit organizations collaborating with communities to build civic capacity in North Highland Park, a neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia. Place-focused planning strategies during the twentieth century diminished civic capacity in the community and fostered isolation. Today, collaborative community work in Highland Park is incorporating the assets, resources and knowledge held in the community into strategies to improve quality of life using collaborative learning. A case study approach closely analyzes community engagement and revitalization processes in North Highland Park between 2011 and 2017. Nonprofit organizations mobilized and led a group of community-based collaborators, including nonprofit staff members, government officials, nonprofit funders, and residents. In Highland Park, nonprofit organizations collaborate with communities, emphasizing shared ownership and collaborative learning, to build civic capacity in the community.

In this study, the students in my Year 8 high school mathematics class and I set out to develop a functional and effective collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment. This research was informed by the multiple theoretical perspectives of collaborative learning in mathematics education, Vygotskian learning and teaching approaches, and the Constructivist referent for pedagogic practices. Merging these perspectives into a viable foundation for our classroom practices led to the successful development of our collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment.Working in groups of three or four, the students developed their social norms and utilised a collaborative approach to their learning of mathematics. Groups engaged in discussion, explanation, negotiation, peer teaching, giving help, receiving help and consensus building as part of their daily routine in our classroom. I kept qualitative and quantitative records of our progress as we worked to improve our collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment during the first six months of the school year. I collected daily fieldnotes, audio and video recordings, observations taken by researcher colleagues, learning environment surveys and a variety of other artefacts. All of this data was analysed daily, weekly and monthly, so producing the monthly narratives upon which we based our determination of the success of this implementation.By adopting a Vygotskian perspective we utilised our peer interactive environment to develop and enhance 'scientific' and 'everyday' concepts through individual and group dynamic, overlapping (multiple) 'zones of proximal development' as well as our classwide 'zone of proximal development'. Our constructivist perspective aided us in focusing on our prior knowledge and experiences, which in turn enhanced the effectiveness of our collaborative ++ / classroom learning environment. We utilised the MCI and CLES learning environment measures to direct our endeavours to further improve our collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment. The detailed analysis of the data from Months 1, 2 and 3 of this implementation, coupled with highlight analysis of the data from Months 4, 5 and 6, led me to conclude that teachers and their students can develop a functional and effective collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment based on the multiple theoretical perspectives utilised in this study.This research improved my practice as a teacher and provided a functional and effective collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment for the students to work in. It informed many of the calls for further research of this type and established that the theoretical concepts, upon which the implementation was founded, were valuable and useful in the practical setting of our collaborative peer interactive classroom. The findings are also valuable for the support which they offer to the latest movements in education, particularly the student-centred, outcomes-based approaches to learning and teaching. These approaches advocate the use of collaborative learning environments, and this study provides strong guidance as to how such environments can be successfully implemented.

This project aims to examine the effects of incorporating collaborative learning methods extensively in a core first-year mathematics subject and to investigate students' individual learning style preferences, their attitudes towards group-work in mathematics and the objectives for setting group work, their attitudes towards using computers, in particular, Mathematica and their concerns regarding the assessment of group-based work. Following the rapid increase in the use of technology in education over the last decade, one would perhaps expect to find an overabundance of literature regarding the effects of its use. However, the number of technology related research studies has been surprisingly low, especially those pertaining to the curriculum area of Mathematics at the tertiary level. The availability of quality software, the need for curriculum redesign, and limited research on the effectiveness of computers as a teaching tool, are factors to have hindered the rate of implementation and of subsequent research. Also, despite the rapid growth in the use of collaborative methods of learning, and widespread belief in the importance of such methods, there have been calls for increased research especially at the tertiary level, and particularly in engineering education looking at students who have to study mathematics because it is a requirement and not because they are majoring in mathematics, therefore needing to determine how best to make their learning a meaningful and enjoyable experience. This project aims to investigative the effects of incorporating a rich collaborative learning based curriculum in either face-to-face or computer-supported environments in the subject Mathematical Modelling 1. The carrying out of this project is a response to the lack of research in a curriculum area of tertiary mathematics. Within the context of mathematics, issues of attitude, gender differences, motivation and achievement are considered. The chief purpose of this investigation is to explore the effectiveness of collaborative learning in mathematics at university, and to provide some insight as to what degree, if any, the use of such methods enhance mathematics learning. The research uses an experimental methodology, an attitudinal questionnaire and indepth interviews to elicit students' feelings and/or opinions toward the incorporation of collaborative learning. The questionnaire sought demographic information from the students, namely, name, age, gender, length of stay in Australia and language spoken at home, and investigates the role of these factors in the effectiveness of, and interest during the tutorial and laboratory sessions a time when students were working on collaborative-based activities. This project maintains interest in the use of collaborative problem solving, and the belief that the findings could be of international significance if the effectiveness of this style of learning can be finnly established. It is also hoped that grounding the collaborative activities in the literature, and providing statistical and theoretical support for their use might promote them more widely in mathematics in particular and more generally, across universities in Australia. The broad issue of whether the use of collaborative learning enhances mathematics learning can be broken down into a number of specific inquiries. The key research questions may thus be expressed as follows: I. What are tertiary students' preferred learning styles? 2. What are students' opinions about group work in mathematics? 3. Does collaborative group work foster a deep, meaningful understanding of mathematics? 4. What are students' attitudes about using CAS such as Mathematica? 5. What are students' attitudes about the assessment of group-based work? 6. Are there any differences in students' learning style preferences across the various demographics? 7. Are there any differences in students' attitudes towards collaborative learning methods across the various demographics? 8. Are there any differences in students' attitudes towards the use of Mathematica across the various demographics? 9. Are there any variations in students' attitudes towards the assessment of group work in mathematics across the various demographics? This study does not claim to fill the void into the effectiveness of computers or collaborative learning methods, but should provide greater insight and support to future research.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This study looked at the implementation of a collaborative learning model at two schools in Sydney designed to realise the principles recommended by reform documents such as the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 2000) and policy documents including Numeracy, A Priority for All (DETYA, 2000). A total of 158 year seven and year eight students ranging in age from 12 to 15 years old from two schools participated in the study. In all, seven classroom teachers participated in the study each completing two topics using the collaborative learning model. Four research questions were the focus of the current study. Three research questions were drawn from eight principles identified in the literature regarding what constitutes effective mathematics learning. These questions related to the nature of collaboration evident in each classroom, the level of motivation and self-regulation displayed by students in the different types of classrooms and the relationship between learning mathematics within the collaborative learning model and real-world mathematics. A final research question examined the degree to which the concerns of teachers relating to preparing students for examinations are met within the collaborative learning model. Several different data collection strategies were adopted to develop a picture of the different forms of activity evident in each classroom and the changes that took place in each classroom during and after the implementation of the collaborative learning model. These included classroom observations, interviews with student and teacher participants, questionnaires and obtaining test results. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were used to reduce the data collected. Factor scores and test results were compared using t-tests, ANOVAs and Mann Whitney nonparametric tests. Data collected from interviews and classroom observations were analysed using a grounded approach beginning with the open coding of phenomena. Leont’ev’s theoretical approach to activity systems (1972; 1978) was then used to describe the changing nature of classroom activity with the introduction of the collaborative learning model. Within the collaborative classrooms there were a greater number of mathematical voices participating in classroom discussions, a breaking down of traditional roles held by teachers and students, and dominant patterns of collaboration evident in each classroom reflecting pre-existing cultural ways of doing. Furthermore, there was some quantitative evidence suggesting that student levels of critical thinking, self-regulation and help seeking increased and students were also observed regulating their own learning as well as the learning of others. Classroom practice was also embedded in the cultural practice of preparing topic tests, enabling students to use mathematics within the context of a work group producing a shared outcome. Finally, there was quantitative evidence that students in some of the collaborative classes did not perform as well as students in traditional classrooms on topic tests. Comments from students and teachers, however, suggested that for some students the collaborative learning model enabled them to learn more effectively, although other students were frustrated by the greater freedom and lack of direction. Future research could investigate the effectiveness of strategies to overcome this frustration and the relationship between different types of collaboration and developing mathematical understanding.