How likely are college students to be influenced by others in small-group projects: A study on group compositions and coursework-related collaborative information seeking behavior

Abstract

Small-group teaching has been a preferred pedagogy in many college-level courses. It is crucial for college students to seek information with peers in their small groups to achieve their learning goals. While peer influence has been proven as one of the factors in students’ information seeking behavior, the role of group compositions in collaborative information seeking remains unclear. In order to reveal how college students are influenced by their peers in their collaborative information seeking process in real-life situations, the current study used a multi-mode survey design to collect data. Five-hundred and thirty-five students participated in the survey. Results showed that while homogeneous and heterogeneous groups regarding gender and disciplinary compositions were evenly distributed, most groups were homogeneous regarding students’ year of study. When collaboratively seeking information for a small-group project, students typically agreed that other peers in the group influenced their collaborative information behavior. While gathering information, students especially considered peers’ opinions; they also tended to give up information if their peers do not need it, especially when in a homogeneous group. However, in heterogeneous groups, students tended to change the sources consulted when gathering information. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research were provided.