may be the reason that she was able to analyse the functioning of the groups in general, as she did in her study journal during the fourth course:
A group increases the feeling of belonging to somewhere, being a part of something. I can personally discuss with people other than those in my group, but you can feel it in some groups that they don’t want visitors from other groups. A well-working group develops a collective spirit. On one hand, this is good, but, on the other, it can create competition and desire to be better in front of other groups.
That kind of behaviour does not help the progress of the studies of those who belong to less active groups.
In general, it seems clear that group 5 had virtually no collective self-regulatory ability as the members were unable to organise their work, observe their progress, or correct their mistakes (not taking part in the online work and discussion). Since the group never seemed to have time or opportunity to become a group, there is little reason to discuss their collective efficacy beliefs.
6.2 Differences in the Cooperative Performances of the
study journal entries that the group never worked on this problem and thus did not solve it.
Group 3 started out well in their collaboration, but their working was hindered by the fact that they soon separated into two separately working pairs (with the fifth member quitting).
However, towards the end, the remaining members of this group started to work well together. Group 4 had more interpersonal differences than many of the other groups and their work showed less characteristics of shared problem solving and more signs of division into independently completed tasks than any other group, except for Group 5 which never worked as a group.
Reading the accounts of the groups’ development separately from their overall context, it would seem that none of the groups really worked well. However, it has to be noted that all the learners had opportunities to discuss things with one another during the contact work days and that many of their online assignments involved discussions across the group boundaries. Thus, the learners had an opportunity to work together even if they did not belong to the same group. It was a common practice for individuals to visit the other groups’ discussion boards to offer additional comments or to ask questions. This general cooperation allowed, for example, for the fact that the sole active learner from Group 5 found help and opportunities for collective learning from her peers.
These findings are in accordance with earlier knowledge on group learning and relationship-based learning, presented in subsection 3.5.1. Ruohotie (1999) states that learners need to exhibit empathy, self-reflection, self-expression as well as active listening and acceptance of feedback. In the present study, it is clear that some learners possessed more advanced skills for this than others. For example, some of the learners in Group 3 expressed clear empathy towards the lone learner in Group 5. Furthermore, Fletcher (1996) indicated that group members should realise their interdependence, their need to foster each other’s development mutually and their need to recognise their individual strengths that benefit the group (reciprocity). It is clear from the descriptions of the learner groups (section 6.1) that not all learners understood these requirements, even though they had been taught the basics of collaboration during the first course of their studies. Overall, the characteristics and abilities proposed by Ruohotie and Fletcher are such that would all be present in an ideal learner group, but, as is apparent in the descriptions of the learner groups in the present study, they are rarely shared by all the learners.
The above descriptions of the groups’ development also included early tentative investigation of the collective efficacy beliefs and collective self-regulatory strategies of the groups. It is, however, necessary to study the learners individually and not merely as parts of their groups in order to find out which factors eventually contributed to the success or failure of group work (research question 4). The next chapter explores the individual motivation and learning strategies of the learners, including their self-efficacy beliefs, as well as the emerging collective aspects of motivational and learning strategies.
7 MOTIVATION AND LEARNING STRATEGIES AND ACHIEVEMENT
Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know -- and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.
Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
The previous chapter provided qualitative descriptions of each of the five learner groups, concentrating on the developmental stages that they went through over the course of their studies and the level of cooperation the groups reached in their work on the learning assignments and learning in general. The main purpose of that chapter was to respond to research question 1 and identify the main differences in the cooperation of the five learner groups, to provide background for the investigation of the other research questions.
For the purposes of the present chapter, the learners were categorised into three groups based on their general achievement in their studies, as indicated by their grade averages.
The purpose in doing so was to identify the most meaningful differences in the motivation and learning strategies of high and low achievers (research problem 2). How these strategies correlate with the learners’ commitment to group work and whether the high achievers were also skilled collaborators (research problem 3) was also considered. This part of the analysis also includes results from Bayesian analysis of the APL questionnaire.
The next chapter (Chapter 8) will use the results of this analysis and also information from the previous chapter in order to fashion a model of motivational and leaning strategies, including the collaborative work strategies that are important to successful learning in online learning environments. The categorisation of most of these strategies is based on of the earlier research that provides the foundation for this research project, at least insofar as those theoretical conceptualizations are consistent with what was revealed by the
phenomenographic analysis of the study journals. The categories introduced in the model are complemented by qualitative descriptions of their variability in the research data.
As stated above, the learners were categorised as high, average and low achievers on the basis of their general achievement level as indicated by their grades for the courses. It was decided that a division into three groups was preferable to the traditional two (high and low achievers), because initial analysis of the study journals indicated that the differences between high and average achievers, and, in turn, average and low achievers, were sufficient to require a deeper analysis.
During the initial analysis, it became clear that some learners discontinued their studies because of certain disrupting life events, such as unemployment or the death of a close family member even though they had received relatively good grades from the previous courses. On the other hand, some learners continued their studies until the end despite similar incidents in their private lives. Although those who discontinued their studies were categorised as low achievers for the purposes of this study, it is recognised that people are different and that similar events may have vastly different effects on the people who experience them. Thus, it is to be expected that the results drawn from the low achiever category may not be very homogenous and that there may be individuals in that group who, under different circumstances, would have been average or high achievers. In addition, in the light of the present study, it has to be noted that there may also be learners amongst the other categories who, under different circumstances, might have discontinued their studies but who, because of strong peer support or other factors, persevered and finished their studies with the others.
The goal of this part of the study was to find the most meaningful differences in the motivation and learning strategies between high, average and low achievers. It also explored how these strategies correlate with the learners’ group working skills and whether the high achievers were also skilled collaborators. This chapter also includes results from Bayesian analysis of the APL questionnaire, in which the three achievement categories were used as a background variable in order to apply Bayesian Classification Modelling to produce a model revealing the questionnaire items that best explain the differences between the three groups. In order to maintain the anonymity of the research participants, authentic quotes are presented only from the high achievers. The quotes in other
categorisations were composed by the author, based on authentic quotes from the study journals but modified so as to ensure that the original authors could not be identified.
In addition, in some learning skill categories explored below, it was necessary to compare the high achievers with the average and low achievers together. This is because the low achiever grouping included all those who failed to finish their studies, which also meant that their study journals were generally the shortest and offered the least information of the three groupings.