Goal Setting and Self-Reflection in Collaborative Small-Group Discussions

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Advances in Cooperative Learning

Abstract

This research examined the characteristics of student-generated goals and self-reflections and how they were related to students’ academic self-efficacy in the context of a collaborative small-group discussions. Goals generated by students are found to be more motivating than prescribed goals (Cheung, 2004), yet the nature of such goals has not been fully understood. The preliminary findings suggest that students’ self-generated goals for collaborative argumentation tend to focus on regulating the amount of talk more than the ways of talking. Students tended to evaluate their goal fulfillment without justification. These findings were true more frequently in students with lower academic self-efficacy.

Keywords: goal setting, self-evaluation, academic self-efficacy, collaborative small-group discussion, argumentation

Authors

• Elizabeth Kraatz, The Ohio State University - Columbus

• Tzu-Jung Lin, The Ohio State University