What Does Tagcloud Show? Effect of Group Interaction Styles in Team Blogs on Students' Individual and Group Cognition

• In Event: Group Cognition and Social Media

Abstract

This presentation reports a research study about the effects of group interaction styles in team blogging on students’ individual knowledge construction and group cognition as demonstrated by tagclouds. Thirty-six students were randomly assigned into eight groups and blogged for five weeks. Four groups were randomly selected to respond to the first blog post each week whereas the rest four groups contributed to the teamblogs freely without the requirement of comments. Data analyses included correlating students’ individual and group rankings (as demonstrated in their team’s tagclouds) of concepts with the instructor’s ranking. Results revealed that the relatively intense group interactions on teamblogs promoted individual learning as well as group cognition.

Authors

• Ying Xie, Northern Illinois University

• Shu-yuan Lin, Idaho State University