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Collaboration as Conducive to Learning: Students’ Preferences for Learning and Attainments

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Abstract

This chapter explores how participants responded to the CL that experienced during the teaching intervention. The quantitative findings concerning students’ perceptions of the learning approaches used are reported first. Attention then turns to the effect of CL on participants’ learning preferences, using Cantwell and Andrews’s (2002) instrument for investigation. Finally, the reported positive attainments are further presented. All of these results are derived from the CL questionnaire, and the qualitative findings were gleaned from students’ learning journals and open-ended questions of the CL questionnaire.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Seven items were included in this scale (see Sect. 5.1.2.2). These items were labeled as CQ1T1, CQ7T1, CQ9T1, CQ20T1, CQ23T1, CQ25T1, and CQ29T1 in the pre-test (Time 1), and were named CQ1T2, CQ7T2, CQ9T2, CQ20T2, CQ23T2, CQ25T2, and CQ29T2 in the post-test (Time 2). CQ1T1, CQ1T2, CQ9T1, and CQ9T2 were reverse-scored for the consistency of all variables, where “1” became “5”, “2” became “4”, “3” remained unchanged, “4” became “2”, and “5” became “1”. Based on this procedure, CQ1T1, CQ1T2, CQ9T1, CQ9T2 were recoded and therefore new variables were obtained: CQ1T1 → CQ1_T1, CQ1T2 → CQ1_T2, CQ9T1 → CQ9_T1, and CQ9T2 → CQ9_T2. In order to compare students’ preferences for individual learning between Time 1 and Time 2, two new variables Individual_T1 and Individual_T2 were computed. This was done by adding the respective scores of the seven items at Time 1 and Time 2. Thus, the target variables: Individual_T1 = Sum (CQ1_T1 + CQ7T1 + CQ9_T1 + CQ20T1 + CQ23T1 + CQ25T1 + CQ29T1) and Individual_T2 = Sum (CQ1_T2 + CQ7T2 + CQ9_T2 + CQ20T2 + CQ23T2 + CQ25T2 + CQ29T2).

  2. 2.

    There were seven items in this scale: Items 4, 12, 13, 16, 19, 22, and 24. Same approaches and procedures were used to compute the following variables.

    Collaborative_T1 = Sum (CQ4T1 + CQ12T1 + CQ13T1 + CQ16T1 + CQ19T1 + CQ22T1 + CQ24T1), and Collaborative_T2 = Sum (CQ4T2 + CQ12T2 + CQ13T2 + CQ16T2 + CQ19T2 + CQ22T2 + CQ24T2). No items were reverse-scored.

  3. 3.

    Four items were included: Items 3, 6, 17 and 27. New variables were computed for analysis. Discomfort_T1 = Sum (CQ3T1 + CQ6T1 + CQ17T1 + CQ27T1) and Discomfort_T2 = Sum (CQ3T2 + CQ6T2 + CQ17T2 + CQ27T2). No items were reverse-scored.

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Lin, L. (2015). Collaboration as Conducive to Learning: Students’ Preferences for Learning and Attainments. In: Investigating Chinese HE EFL Classrooms. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44503-7_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44503-7_7

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