Collaborative Learning and Need for Cognition: Considering the Mediating Role of Deep Approaches to Learning

Abstract

We examine the influence of collaborative learning on need for cognition among students from 17 institutions over four years of college. Net of a wide battery of potential confounding influences including precollege academic ability, race, and a pretest of the outcome measure, for example, we find collaborative learning is associated with gains in need for cognition. Moreover, we find three subconstructs of deep approaches to learning mediate this relationship. Specifically, exposure to collaborative learning activities increases students’ use of higher-order learning, integrative learning, and reflective learning, which, in turn, leads to gains in need for cognition.