Collaborative Education

Last week, our group’s challenge was to brainstorm problem spaces,
refining those ideas into a general topic we could really dig into. After
settling on the idea of collaborative education, our task this week was to
clearly define the problem space. Exploring the nooks and crannies of the
issue in hopes of getting a better picture revealed the problem as a
multifaceted one without a clear solution.

This process began with an in-class critique and discussion of our topic.
A lively discussion is integral to better understanding and we found peer
feedback to be invaluable in pointing us in the right direction.

Is this a subject that people care about? Where was collaboration
successful and why? If collaboration failed to present itself, what were
the root causes?

With themes stretching from student culture to class structure and
curriculum, these questions and more were addressed.

Our research is still in the preliminary stages, but there’s evidence for
a few (arguably self-evident) claims.

1. Overall, people value collaboration! Aside from a few dissenting
opinions, most people liked collaborating because

— It’s effective!

For engineering based courses, students valued peers for their help in
completing assignments, clarifying fuzzy understandings of course
material, and discussing relevant ideas. In project-based art classes,
informal in-class critique helped students learn more from their peers
than from their instructor.

— It’s enjoyable! (Who knew?)

Many cited collaborative experiences as their most enjoyable ones.
Late-night coding sessions and scrambling to finish on time bonded
students together and created strong ties.

As an aside, students generally favored studying with their friends, even
when they weren’t studying the same topic. Having like-minded students to
study with makes studying more enjoyable and friends can keep you more
accountable (e.g. calling you out when you’re on Facebook!)

2. Collaboration (or lack thereof) is often the result of a top-down process

— UCSD’s computer science department highly encourages student-body
collaboration — students are physically grouped together in a single lab,
providing access to peers and tutors.

— Students stated that a lot of the time, they only collaborate with
peers when they are forced to by the course. Overall, they end up
enjoying the experience.

— Students valued classes where an on-line collaborative medium was
created and use was incentivized through extra credit. A few students
mentioned that computer science courses, many of which have an online Q&A forum called Piazza, really helped in efforts to better understand the
material and find study-groups. In contrast, another mentioned that he
felt disconnected from peers in some mathematics courses because the
professor never set up a forum and discussions (are they meant for
discussion?) felt like re-hashes of the lecture material with little
student engagement.

— Distribution of grading elements (i.e. 35% labs versus 10% labs) may
have an effect on encouraging collaboration. One student believed that
courses which made labs only 10% of the final grade ultimately inhibited
collaboration — why collaborate together in a lab when time is much
better spent going through the reading material?

3. Some students expressed problems with the offered physical
collaborative spaces

— Temperature was cited as a reason why students avoided certain spaces

— Some students found that areas like Geisel actually discouraged
conversation — areas designated for conversation are sometimes quiet and
students found it uncomfortable to be the loud table.

— People refer to the computer science lab as the dungeons. An
underground space with a sparsity of windows paired with difficult,
time-consuming material? Enough said.

Our goals this week is to do further research and whittle down the mess of
details into a testable hypothesis. Interviewing users is just one method.
Observing public spaces to see if they’re being used and finding
unexpected areas where students collaborate will further clarify the
relationship between spaces and actual collaborative activity. Looking
outwards and analyzing already-existing proposed/implemented solutions
will help us iterate on good ideas and avoid mistakes others have made.

We’ll keep you posted!