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Full-Text Articles in Education

Complementary Lenses: Using Theories Of Situativity And Complexity To Understand Collaborative Learning As Systems-Level Social Activity, Steven J. Zuiker, Kate T. Anderson, Michelle E. Jordan, Olivia G. Stewart Jan 2016

Complementary Lenses: Using Theories Of Situativity And Complexity To Understand Collaborative Learning As Systems-Level Social Activity, Steven J. Zuiker, Kate T. Anderson, Michelle E. Jordan, Olivia G. Stewart

Education Specialties Faculty Publications

This article highlights possibilities for understanding challenges related to collaborative learning by bringing two complementary lenses into theoretical and empirical conversation—complexity and situativity. After presenting a theoretical comparison that characterizes complementarity between complexity and situativity in order to frame their relative contributions to a systems-level understanding of learning processes, we examine persistently unproductive social activity during a 14-session, collaborative engineering design project in a fifth-grade peer group from both perspectives. We do so in order to demonstrate the value of these complementary perspectives for understanding collaborative learning processes and to suggest different explanations of why unproductive social activity sometimes persists …


Engaging Msw Students In Faculty Research: Students’ Perspectives Of Involvement In A Program Evaluation, Rebecca Thomas, Christina M. Chiarelli-Helminiak, Kyle Barrette, Brunilda Ferraj Jan 2016

Engaging Msw Students In Faculty Research: Students’ Perspectives Of Involvement In A Program Evaluation, Rebecca Thomas, Christina M. Chiarelli-Helminiak, Kyle Barrette, Brunilda Ferraj

Social Work (Graduate) Faculty Publications

Engaging social work students in research is challenging, in part, because of the way research is taught in the classroom and the need for learners to effectively develop connections between the “abstract world” of research concepts with the “real world” of professional experiences. This article describes the experiences of graduate social work students involved in a process and outcome evaluation of a community-based program. Analysis of student learning outcomes and the team-based model used to engage students in the evaluation are provided to put forth a paradigm of teaching social work research through direct, supervised, and collaborative engagement.


Developing Critical Collaboration Skills In Engineering Students: Results From An Empirical Study, Pilar Pazos, Nina Magpili, Zikai Zhou, Luis J. Rodriguez Jan 2016

Developing Critical Collaboration Skills In Engineering Students: Results From An Empirical Study, Pilar Pazos, Nina Magpili, Zikai Zhou, Luis J. Rodriguez

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

In highly technical organizations, work is becoming increasingly distributed; requiring practicing engineers to master virtual collaboration skills while acquiring expertise in a range of collaboration technologies. Although there has been great emphasis on developing collaboration competencies in the engineering curriculum, empirical evidence of successful strategies for distributed team settings is scarce. As an attempt to fill this gap this study investigates the impact of a scalable intervention in developing virtual collaboration skills. The intervention, based on instructional scaffolds embedded with collaboration technologies, is aimed at supporting specific processes including planning, goal setting, clarifying goals and expectations, communication, coordination and progress …