High Achievers as Group Workers

Group work has been essential in these studies [. . .]. I have received invaluable help from my colleagues on my questions pertaining to the various topics and assignments... (average achiever)

Tomorrow is the next discussion day. We’d need to get a bit deeper and focus on the issue. I’m still a bit unclear on what we are supposed to be doing, but I’m sure it will come clear to me tomorrow with the help of the other group members.

(average achiever)

When it comes to the low achievers, their comments about their learning strategies were rare. The few comments that they made conform to those of the average achievers, but, for the most part, the low achievers wrote very little in their study journals.

that they were generally amongst the most prolific group workers in terms of the number of messages posted. A total of four of the eight learners categorised as high achievers wrote well over twice as many messages as the average. Only a single high achiever wrote fewer messages than the average, but that may be the result of the fact that the group used also the file area for their discussion in addition to the discussion board.

As the descriptions of the learner groups in Chapter 6 show, the individual groups succeeded to different degrees in their studies. Whereas in Group 1 the high achievers helped the other members and the final entries from the last course show that the group started to work well together, the situation was not as good in some of the other groups.

Whereas the motivational social support and groundwork in Group 1 was strong enough to persuade all the members to eventually take part in collective learning tasks and engage in collective learning strategies, all the other groups lost some members along the way. Of course, in some cases the learners quit despite good peer support, but, in others cases it may be that more support might have saved the group. One of the high achievers in Group 1 commented that he made telephone calls to the other members of the group when they had not visited the forum for a while and it is evident that the high achievers in that group supported the other members in their studies all the way. On the other hand, when Group 3 lost one of their members, it took a long while before the other members in the group reacted, and when they did they turned to the organisers of the course to ask what had happened rather than engage in their own corrective strategies.

These findings about the development of the individual groups already reveal that whereas high achievers were generally active group workers, not all of them went to the lengths that the high achiever in Group 1 did. In other words, although the collective learning strategies of the high achievers were highly developed, they were not always as highly motivated collectively. Also, as a quote from a high achiever in group 4 (repeated below from subsection 6.1.4) shows that even some of the high achievers saw a need to correct their attitude towards collective work during their studies and did not always enter the program as ready-made highly motivated group workers (quote is from the study journal entries written during the fifth course, while the learner was looking back at her own development).

My attitudes changed somewhat, I understood that as a learner I have to invest more of myself, especially when I’m part of a group. It is easy to activate others when you try, otherwise the whole group will fall silent. (high achiever)

Overall, five new categories for collective learning were discovered in the analysis of the learners’ study journals. Two of these, social groundwork and social support, were categorised under motivational abilities, while three were categorised under learning strategies: 1) knowledge sharing, 2) modelling, and 3) feedback seeking (See Table 7.1 below). In the analysis of the research data, it was discovered that the high achievers were generally strong in all these categories, although there were individuals who were not always willing to work very much on social groundwork and support. The average achievers showed slightly weaker enthusiasm for knowledge sharing and cooperation and were more eager to use peer learning strategies, particularly when their aim was to compare their own performance to others rather than learn from them. Similarly, the average achievers were not strong seekers of feedback on their work, and concentrated more on direct help seeking. The average achievers were generally also more negative towards social groundwork, the construction of a shared framework upon which to build.

On the other hand, although they do not write as much about offering social support to others in return, the average achievers saw the social support that they received from others as very important to their own achievement. The majority of the low achievers showed less enthusiasm to understand their group peers, to engage in social groundwork or to engage into collective processing with others.

Table 7.1: Table of Motivation and Learning Strategies in Online Learning Environments

Motivational Aspects Learning Strategy Aspects 1 Value Section 1 Cognitive Strategies

1.1 Intrinsic Goal Orientation 1.1 Rehearsal 1.2 Extrinsic Goal Orientation 1.2 Elaboration 1.3 Meaningfulness of Studies 1.3 Organisation

1.4 Critical Thinking 2 Expectancy Section 2 Metacognitive Strategies

2.1 Control Beliefs 2.1 Planning and Self-Monitoring

2.2 Self-Efficacy 2.2 Self-Evaluation

3 Affective Section 3 Resource Management

3.1 Performance Anxiety 3.1 Time and Study Environment 3.2 Effort

4 Social Motivation 4 Social Learning

4.1 Social Groundwork 4.1 Knowledge Sharing

4.2 Social Support 4.2 Peer Learning

4.3 Feedback Seeking

Thus, in terms of the research problem—“What is the connection between motivational and strategic abilities and commitment to group work?”—it was found that motivated learners, who are highly motivated intrinsically, find their studies meaningful and believe in their own abilities, generally also possess high motivation for group work. As noted above, the learners who possessed high motivational abilities also possessed well developed learning strategies, and thus these two characteristics describe the basic nature of the type of learner that we have been calling a high achiever in the present study. These high achievers worked actively in their groups and also beyond the group borders with all the other learners. They supported participants in other groups who seemed to be having difficulties in their own group.

It should be noted, though, that, even if high achievers may generally be highly active group workers, there is considerable variation amongst highly motivated learners with respect to how much they are willing to invest in supporting others. Although, in general, the high achievers showed a higher level of social commitment and tendency to personal engagement with their colleagues, there were those amongst them remained more formal and distant. The present study includes an example of a high achiever in Group 1 who earned praise from other group members for work done to support the others, but also includes high achievers who remained more socially aloof in the group context socially, even though they took active part in the collective processing of the learning tasks. For example, in Group 2 the social problems that group members referred to in their journals were apparently ignored and group energy was focussed on ‘professional’ execution of the learning tasks.

8 MODEL OF COLLECTIVE ONLINE LEARNING

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

The previous chapters have provided a wealth of information about the development and cooperation of the adult learner groups taking part in the research. They have also taken a look at the differences between high achievers and other learners with respect to motivation and learning strategies, including the collective aspects of these strategies. In addition, the correlation of motivation and learning strategies with participants’

commitment to group work and their overall achievement was examined.

In the unadorned description and analysis of Chapter 6, it was revealed that although the learner groups had problems with cooperation during the studies, they also had high points during which they peaked in their performance, and many of the failings of the individual groups were alleviated by the cooperation over and across the group borders.

Chapter 7 provided a more in-depth analysis of the participants’ motivational and strategic capabilities through two methods, a Likert scale APL questionnaire analysis using Bayesian methods, and a qualitative analysis of the learners’ study journals. It was shown that the data derived from the journals generally supported the indications of the Bayesian analysis and it was possible to present an analysis of the qualitative variation in the learners’ motivational and strategic capabilities. The main findings about learner motivation included the facts that high achievers were highly intrinsically oriented and had high control and self-efficacy beliefs. Also, the learners who discontinued their studies, or failed to complete them, generally saw their studies as less meaningful to themselves than did the other participants. Similarly, the main findings about learning strategies on the basis of APLQ showed that high achievers had stronger cognitive and resource

management strategies than the other learners. The study journals supported this finding, but also indicated that the high achievers used a wider array of metacognitive strategies than the other participants.

In addition to the importance of individual motivational and strategic abilities, Chapter 7 provided evidence to suggest that the collective aspects of motivation and learning strategies are equally important, if not more so, when the learners are using an online group learning environment. It was found that social support and social groundwork (the construction of social relations) are important to the continuing motivation of group members. In both of these areas, high achievers were generally stronger than their less accomplished colleagues, but the greatest differences between the high achievers and other learners was found in their approach to collective learning strategies. On the basis of the qualitative analysis of study journals, the author identified three main categories of collective learning strategies—knowledge sharing, modelling and feedback seeking—and demonstrated significant differences in the ways in which the different achievement groupings performed in respect to these strategies.

It is on the basis of the findings about high achievers and their differences to the other learners that a model of collective online learning will be constructed in this chapter (research question 4). More specifically, this model will explore the motivational and learning strategies that lead to, or support, learning in a collective context, and the factors that contribute to effective group work. Most importantly, from the point of view of the results of the present research, this model will present the collective aspects of motivation and learning strategies that lead to, or support, successful learning in online environments.

The model is not intended to be comprehensive, but to focus on the type of learning that takes place in a collective online environment. The perspective that the author will bring to development of the model of learning was explained in the theoretical background (i.e., constructivist social cognitivism). Therefore, the purpose of the model is to draw out the specific factors that affect the quality of learning in online environments. However, before the model itself is presented, it is important to take one more look at the major factors that affect learning in a collective environment.