A Study of Collaborative Problem Solving of Full-time Students and In-Service Students: The case of hands-on Course at the College of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

Autor: Ming-Hsuan Hung, 洪明瑄
Rok vydání: 2019
Druh dokumentu: 學位論文 ; thesis
Popis: 107
In recent years, an increasing emphasis on the development of collaborative problem-solving ability has been placed internationally. Students need to learn to collaborate with people from other disciplines to solve issues in practical contexts. However, despite the increasing universalization of higher education in Taiwan, researches addressing the learning of full-time students and in-service students have been relatively few. This study will focus on students’ design behavior in the collaborative problem-solving approach, and investigate in the collaborative hands-on learning process of full-time students and in-service students. Furthermore, it analyzes the characteristics of collaborative strategies during the process. Hence, three research questions were examined: 1. Is there any difference between full-time students and in-service students in terms of collaborative problem-solving ability? 2. What similarities and differences between full-time students and in-service students are shown in the collaborative problem-solving model? 3. What are the differences between full-time students and in-service students in terms of completed work? This study provides a case study of the course offered by the College of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science in a national university in northern Taiwan. The subjects were 26 full-time students and 32 in-service students. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used to conduct triangulation. For quantitative analysis, this study adopted the Teamwork Competency Test (TWCT) developed and prepared by Prof. Eduardo Salas and his team at the Department Psychological Sciences, Rice University in the United States. For qualitative analysis, semi-structured in-depth interviews are employed to understand students’ learning processes, analyze finished products and conduct interviews with experts. First of all, questionnaire survey results show that the difference between full-time and in-service students is significant in TWCT categories including “conflict resolution,” “decision making,” and “monitoring and assessing.” Secondly, results of interviews with students and experts reveal that differences between these two types of students are found in four aspects including collaboration and work division, informal communication, comment and feedback, and reflection and correction. Regarding finished products, the games produced by full-time students feature designs of themed levels with varying difficulties, and are thus fit for players of all ages; while those produced by in-service students have mechanisms of recording learning process or tracking learning effect, thus facilitating the teachers’ in-class demonstrations. Based on the results of TWCT questionnaire, the comparison between teacher/student interviews and the teachers’ evaluation of finished products, this study has made the following eight conclusions: (1) Group communication and coordination are extremely important in resolving conflicts; (2) time pressures affect students’ decision-making ability; (3) time allocation is a factor of the effectiveness of inter-group mutual supervision; (4) the size of group members is a factor of work division within the teams; (5) the teammates’ informal communication ability sometimes do affect their collaborative process ; (6) differences in various perspectives is a factor of reflection ability; (7) difference in critical ability leads to disparate criteria in peer review; (8) attitudes towards finished products influence further developments of their finished products. This study hereby provides directions for future course improvement. First, for in-service student, it would be better to re-designing available games to become more user-friendly, rather than start designing games from the scratch. Secondly, it might be crucial to create real-life teaching scenarios for full-time students in order to make their products more practical. Finally, this study offers 3 suggestions for future studies. First, control the factor of the group size between full-time students and in-service students. Secondly, change the assessment of TWCT questionnaire to pre-text and post-text in order to understand the progresses of the two types of students before and after adopting the collaborative problem-solving approach. Thirdly, conduct heterogeneous grouping for full-time and in-service students to allow them to benefit from each other’s strengths and learn from each other’s shortcomings.
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