Division of Psychology, Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University Linköping, Sweden.
Front Psychol. 2014 Jun 5;5:558. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00558. eCollection 2014.
Group work is used as a means for learning at all levels in educational systems. There is strong scientific support for the benefits of having students learning and working in groups. Nevertheless, studies about what occurs in groups during group work and which factors actually influence the students' ability to learn is still lacking. Similarly, the question of why some group work is successful and other group work results in the opposite is still unsolved. The aim of this article is to add to the current level of knowledge and understandings regarding the essence behind successful group work in higher education. This research is focused on the students' experiences of group work and learning in groups, which is an almost non-existing aspect of research on group work prior to the beginning of the 21st century. A primary aim is to give university students a voice in the matter by elucidating the students' positive and negative points of view and how the students assess learning when working in groups. Furthermore, the students' explanations of why some group work ends up being a positive experience resulting in successful learning, while in other cases, the result is the reverse, are of interest. Data were collected through a study-specific questionnaire, with multiple choice and open-ended questions. The questionnaires were distributed to students in different study programs at two universities in Sweden. The present result is based on a reanalysis and qualitative analysis formed a key part of the study. The results indicate that most of the students' experiences involved group work that facilitated learning, especially in the area of academic knowledge. Three important prerequisites (learning, study-social function, and organization) for group work that served as an effective pedagogy and as an incentive for learning were identified and discussed. All three abstractions facilitate or hamper students' learning, as well as impact their experiences with group work.
小组作业在教育系统的各个层次都被用作学习的一种手段。有强有力的科学依据支持让学生在小组中学习和工作的好处。然而，关于小组作业中学生在小组中发生了什么，以及哪些因素实际上影响了学生的学习能力，仍缺乏研究。同样，为什么有些小组作业是成功的，而其他小组作业则适得其反的问题也尚未解决。本文的目的是增加当前关于高等教育中成功小组作业本质的知识和理解。这项研究集中在学生的小组作业和小组学习体验上，这是 21 世纪初之前小组作业研究中几乎不存在的一个方面。一个主要目的是通过阐明学生的积极和消极观点以及学生在小组作业中评估学习的方式，让大学生在这个问题上有发言权。此外，学生们解释为什么有些小组作业最终成为一个积极的体验，导致成功的学习，而在其他情况下，结果则相反，这一点也很有趣。数据是通过一项特定于研究的问卷收集的，问卷中有多项选择和开放式问题。问卷分发给瑞典两所大学的不同学习项目的学生。本研究结果基于重新分析和定性分析，这是研究的一个关键部分。研究结果表明，大多数学生的小组作业经历都有助于学习，特别是在学术知识方面。确定并讨论了小组作业的三个重要前提条件（学习、学习-社交功能和组织），它们作为一种有效的教学法和学习激励因素。这三个抽象概念都促进或阻碍了学生的学习，也影响了他们对小组作业的体验。
