How Teacher Education Students Collaborate When Solving an Asymmetric Digital Task

Abstract

Collaboration skills are essential when people work together to address challenges in society that are too complex for any one person to solve alone. University teacher education programs should promote teaching practices and tasks that support the development of collaboration skills. In this study, 292 university teacher education students worked in pairs on an asymmetric digital task which required collaboration via chat message exchanges. An asymmetric computer simulation was used to unevenly distribute functionality necessary for solving the task among the pairs, thereby establishing a condition of interdependence. Log data from the simulation and chat messages were collected. However, simple learning analytics indicators such as time spent on the task, the number of questions asked, or the length of messages exchanged did not reveal any strong correlation with task performance. Consequently, qualitative analysis was conducted to review the chat message exchanges and determine what characterises collaborative performance. According to the qualitative findings, sharing information and developing a common understanding were critical for success. We distinguished three unique groups based on coding collaborative behaviour: low, medium, and high performers. Dyads tend to perform poorly when a student does not share their unique information. The asymmetric simulation used in this study is an excellent opportunity to practice developing collaboration skills. Although this was a new problem-solving task for most students, half of the dyads were successful at it. Future research should investigate whether a second attempt with a similar asymmetric digital task would enable all participants to be successful.