Does Collaborative Learning Influence Persistence to the Second Year of College?

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to determine whether engaging in collaborative learning influences persistence to the 2nd year of college among 2,987 college freshmen at 19 institutions. Considering potential confounders such as sex, race, precollege academic ability, type of institution attended, college coursework taken, academic motivation, and the clustered nature of the data, those students who engage in collaborative learning are significantly more likely than students who do not learn collaboratively to persist to the 2nd year of college. The results of our analyses suggest the influence of collaborative learning on persistence affects students similarly, regardless of individual differences by sex, race, or tested precollege academic ability. Lastly, the influence of collaborative learning on persistence appears to be mediated by peer interactions. That is, learning collaboratively leads to greater levels of positive peer interactions, which in turn is associated with greater odds of persisting to the 2nd year of college.

[1]  John M. Braxton,et al.  The role of active learning in college student persistence , 2008 .

[2]  John P. Bean.  The Application of a Model of Turnover in Work Organizations to the Student Attrition Process , 2017 .

[3]  Robert M. Gonyea,et al.  Unmasking the Effects of Student Engagement on First-Year College Grades and Persistence , 2008 .

[4]  David W. Johnson,et al.  Cooperative Learning Returns To College What Evidence Is There That It Works , 1998 .

[5]  Kenneth A. Bruffee,et al.  Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge , 1999 .

[6]  Vincent Tinto,et al.  Colleges as Communities: Taking Research on Student Persistence Seriously , 1997, The Review of Higher Education.

[7]  Nathan K. Lindsay,et al.  Liberal Arts Student Learning Outcomes: An Integrated Approach , 2007 .

[8]  B. Fisher,et al.  Decision emergence: Phases in group decision‐making , 1970 .

[9]  Brian P. An.  The Role of Academic Motivation and Engagement on the Relationship between Dual Enrollment and Academic Performance , 2014 .

[10]  P. R. Laughlin,et al.  Social facilitation and observational learning of individuals and cooperative pairs , 1975 .

[11]  Carol L. Colbeck,et al.  Developing Performance Indicators for Assessing Classroom Teaching Practices and Student Learning , 2001 .

[12]  Ernest T. Pascarella,et al.  First-Year Seminars Increase Persistence and Retention: A Summary of the Evidence from How College Affects Students , 2006 .

[13]  A. Piquero,et al.  USING THE CORRECT STATISTICAL TEST FOR THE EQUALITY OF REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS , 1998 .

[14]  R. Slavin.  When does cooperative learning increase student achievement , 1983 .

[15]  Vincent Tinto.  Dropout from Higher Education: A Theoretical Synthesis of Recent Research , 1975 .

[16]  A. Astin.  Retaining and Satisfying Students. , 1987 .

[17]  Ernest T. Pascarella,et al.  Predicting voluntary freshman year persistence/withdrawal behavior in a residential university: A path analytic validation of Tinto's model. , 1983 .

[18]  D. Christopher Brooks,et al.  IPAS Implementation Handbook. , 2014 .

[19]  Claire Howell Major,et al.  Boundary Crossings: Cooperative Learning, Collaborative Learning, and Problem-Based Learning , 2014 .

[20]  G. Peltier,et al.  Student Persistence in College: A Review of Research , 2000 .

[21]  Dudley B. Woodard,et al.  Retention and Institutional Effort: A Self-Study Framework , 2001 .

[22]  R. Breen,et al.  Total, Direct, and Indirect Effects in Logit and Probit Models , 2013 .

[23]  David W. Johnson,et al.  An Educational Psychology Success Story: Social Interdependence Theory and Cooperative Learning , 2009 .

[24]  David W. Johnson.  Circles of learning: Cooperation in the classroom , 1986 .

[25]  Simon Hooper,et al.  Cooperative CBI: The Effects of Heterogeneous versus Homogeneous Grouping on the Learning of Progressively Complex Concepts , 1988 .

[26]  L. Schmelkin,et al.  Faculty Perspectives on Course and Teacher Evaluations , 1997 .

[27]  S. Schwartz,et al.  Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition , 1987 .

[28]  Gregory C. Wolniak,et al.  Impacts of Good Practices on Cognitive Development, Learning Orientations, and Graduate Degree Plans During the First Year of College , 2006 .

[29]  K. Williams,et al.  Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing , 1979 .

[30]  Vincent Tinto,et al.  Research and Practice of Student Retention: What Next? , 2006 .

[31]  Eileen M. Oickle,et al.  Effects of Cooperative Learning Teams on Student Achievement and Race Relations: Treatment by Race Interactions. , 1981 .

[32]  Michael B. Paulsen,et al.  Evaluating the influence of peer learning on psychological well-being , 2016 .

[33]  Ernest T. Pascarella,et al.  Effective Instruction and College Student Persistence: Some New Evidence. , 2008 .

[34]  Penelope L. Peterson,et al.  The Relationship of Student Ability and Small-Group Interaction to Student Achievement , 1982 .

[35]  P. R. Laughlin.  Selection versus reception concept-attainment paradigms for individuals and cooperative pairs. , 1972 .

[36]  Tracy C. Davis.  How College Affects Students (Vol. 2): A Third Decade of Research (review) , 2006 .

[37]  Linda M. Kneidinger,et al.  Not Just the Usual Cast of Characteristics: Using Personality To Predict College Performance and Retention. , 2000 .

[38]  Ernest T. Pascarella,et al.  Exposure to Effective Instruction and College Student Persistence: A Multi-Institutional Replication and Extension , 2011 .

[39]  R. Hauser,et al.  The Decomposition of Effects in Path Analysis , 1975 .

[40]  R. Reason.  An Examination of Persistence Research Through the Lens of a Comprehensive Conceptual Framework , 2009 .

[41]  Ernest T. Pascarella,et al.  How college affects students , 1991 .

[42]  K. Bruffee.  Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge , 1995 .

[43]  S. Myers,et al.  The Fundamentals of Small Group Communication , 2008 .

[44]  D. Murphey,et al.  Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses , 2011 .

[45]  Nathaniel J. Bray,et al.  Faculty Teaching Skills and Their Influence on the College Student Departure Process , 2000 .

[46]  John M. Braxton,et al.  Understanding and Reducing College Student Departure , 2004 .

[47]  L. S. Vygotskiĭ,et al.  Mind in society : the development of higher psychological processes , 1978 .

[48]  Simone Buzwell,et al.  The problem of free-riding in group projects: Looking beyond social loafing as reason for non-contribution , 2013 .

[49]  I. Saltiel.  Defining Collaborative Partnerships , 1998 .

[50]  Michelle K. Smith,et al.  Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics , 2014, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[51]  E. Pascarella,et al.  The Benefits of Good Teaching Extend beyond Course Achievement. , 2015 .

[52]  K. Patricia Cross,et al.  Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty , 2004 .

[53]  Vincent Tinto,et al.  Classrooms as Communities: Exploring the Educational Character of Student Persistence. , 1997 .

[54]  D. Boud,et al.  Peer Learning in Higher Education: Learning from and with Each Other , 2014 .

[55]  Kenneth A. Feldman,et al.  The association between student ratings of specific instructional dimensions and student achievement: Refining and extending the synthesis of data from multisection validity studies , 1989 .

[56]  Amaury Nora,et al.  Interactions with Peers and Objective and Self-Reported Cognitive Outcomes across 3 Years of College. , 1999 .

[57]  C. Clogg,et al.  Statistical Methods for Comparing Regression Coefficients Between Models , 1995, American Journal of Sociology.

[58]  John M. Braxton,et al.  The Influence of Active Learning on the College Student Departure Process , 2000 .

[59]  David A. Sears,et al.  Effects of Small-Group Learning on Transfer: a Meta-Analysis , 2015 .

[60]  D. Heath.  What the Enduring Effects of Higher Education Tell Us about a Liberal Education , 1976 .

[61]  P. R. Laughlin.  SELECTION STRATEGIES IN CONCEPT ATTAINMENT AS A FUNCTION OF NUMBER OF PERSONS AND STIMULUS DISPLAY. , 1965, Journal of experimental psychology.

[62]  L. Dee Fink,et al.  Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching , 2002 .

[63]  Amy S. Hirschy,et al.  Career and Technical Education (CTE) Student Success in Community Colleges , 2011 .

[64]  Michael J. Prince,et al.  Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research , 2004 .

[65]  R. Slavin.  Cooperative Learning: Theory, Research and Practice , 1990 .

[66]  Stuart A. Karabenick,et al.  Relation of perceived instructional goals and incentives to college students' use of learning strategies , 1997 .

[67]  Julie A. Caplow,et al.  A Context for Learning: Collaborative Groups in the Problem-Based Learning Environment , 2000 .

[68]  Ernest T. Pascarella,et al.  Collaborative learning: Its impact on college students' development and diversity , 2002 .

[69]  D. Heath.  Growing up in college : liberal education and maturity , 1968 .

[70]  Mona Hicks,et al.  Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More , 2006 .

[71]  Joseph B. Berger,et al.  A Modified Model of College Student Persistence: Exploring the Relationship Between Astin's Theory of Involvement and Tinto's Theory of Student Departure , 1997 .

[72]  Leonard Springer,et al.  Effects of Small-Group Learning on Undergraduates in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology: A Meta-Analysis , 1997 .

[73]  R. Heinrich.  Career and Technical Education , 2019 .

[74]  C. Mood.  Logistic Regression: Why We Cannot Do What We Think We Can Do, and What We Can Do About It , 2010 .

[75]  Raymond P. Perry,et al.  The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: An Evidence-Based Perspective , 2007 .

[76]  David W. Johnson,et al.  Active Learning: Cooperation in the College Classroom , 2006 .