The Effects of Group Awareness Tools on Preservice Teachers' Socially Shared Regulation in a Collaborative Project

• In Event: Community of Inquiry and Collaborative Learning

Abstract

Students often complain about disproportionate contributions among group members in a collaborative project. To improve the experience, we applied self-developed group awareness tools (GATs) to visualize members’ participation in groups and examined the effects of GATs on groups’ socially shared regulation in a collaborative project. In this study, twenty-six pre-service teachers were randomly assigned to five groups, and they collaborated to write joint lesson planning documents together. During the collaborating processes, GATs were used to provide real-time awareness information. Results indicated that students’ regulation processes became more balanced and shared after using GATs. Social network analysis on students’ interactions revealed that their participation and interactions with members showed an incredible increase. In addition, students were satisfied with the collaborating processes.

Authors

• Lei Zhang, Shanghai International Studies University

• Xiangdong Chen, East China Normal University