Promoting collaborative reflection to foster interprofessional collaboration skills: Putting laboratory findings to the test in the field

Abstract

Finding ways to support learners in becoming effective collaborators is a key challenge in higher education. Educational technologies can help to achieve this goal. However, the effectiveness of pedagogical design principles underlying these technologies needs to be tested empirically to inform evidence-based teaching in higher education. In the present study, we examine the effect of a technologically-supported collaborative reflection activity on learners’ knowledge gain about effective collaboration and about the quality of their interaction. To this end, we compare the results of a field study that was conducted in a course for civil engineering students (n = 66), with results of a laboratory study with n = 57 university students. Both field and laboratory study consisted of two collaborative problem-solving phases, in which students worked in small groups to solve information pooling problems. Multilevel modeling indicates that the technology-supported collaborative reflection activity between the two collaborative problem-solving phases increased explicit knowledge about effective collaboration. The quality of collaboration during subsequent collaboration, however, was not affected. Further, we found that groups’ self-assessments were in line with expert ratings of their collaboration quality. We discuss these findings in terms of the learning mechanisms behind technology-supported collaborative reflection and the extent to which these forms of support foster collaboration skills. Thus, our study adds insights on how to join educational technologies with pedagogical design principles to support collaborative learning.