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From Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration to Learned Helplessness

Explore the journey of Mark Guzdial's Swiki/CoWeb and its shift from promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration to uncovering the reasons behind student resistance to collaboration. Discover the challenges faced and the impact on student learning in this thought-provoking study.

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From Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration to Learned Helplessness

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  1. From Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration to Learned Helplessness “Mystery Presenter” Aka Mark Guzdial Georgia Tech

  2. Swiki/CoWeb: It’s a Wiki Designed for Classwork

  3. Originally, CoOL (Collaborative On-Line Studio) Grad students posting courthouse designs for courthouse designers to critique Won Architecture Magazine and American Institute of Architects Awards Why? A virtual design studio without specialized hardware that people could use Example: Use in Architecture

  4. Example: Use in Computer Science: HCI Review

  5. Uses in Engineering and Computer Science • Midterm and final exam reviews • Group memory • Glossaries • Case libraries

  6. More disciplines to interdisciplinary • Since it’s working in different disciplines, maybe it would support interdisciplinary studies? • Idea: Create a Wiki for “Computational Modeling” • We teach differential equations in Calculus • We teach MATLAB in Computer Science • Chemical engineering Jrs and Srs build simulations, representing differential equations in MATLAB. • Benefits of interdisciplinary forum • Who best to answer the Seniors questions about MATLAB than the Frosh learning it? • By working with Jrs/Srs, Frosh figure out why they’re studying diff eqs and MATLAB.

  7. From NSF Funding to…Nothing • Cross-disciplinary team wins NSF grant to implement this idea: Guzdial from Computing, Morley from Math, Ludovice and Realff from ChemEng. • After 1.5 years…our Swiki had nothing in it. • Examples: • One semester, Architecture class (n=171) and ChemEng class (n=24) started at same time with Swiki. • At week 10,:Arch class had 1500 pages with some pages with 30 authors. ChemEng class didn’t have a single page yet. • In CS class with 340 students, only 22 students used the Swiki in a 15 week semester.

  8. Just how bad was it? • On a mandatory assignment involving a math class studying results from Engineering students’ simulations, 40% of math students accepted a zero rather than collaborate with engineers. • We provided an Equation Editor in the CoWeb for an Engineering and a Math course to facilitate talking about equations. Not a single student even tried the Editor.

  9. New research! • NSF program manager agreed to let us shift our focus. • Instead of creating an interdisciplinary Swiki for students, we started exploring a new question:Why are some students so resistant to collaboration? • Two main reasons.

  10. Reason 1: Strong Sense of Competition • Student quotes on “Why didn’t you participate in CoWeb?” “1) didn't want to get railed 2) with the curve it is better when your peers do badly” “since it is a curved class most people don’t want others to do well” (Note: Students claimed that the course grades were “curved” even when there was none!)

  11. Reason 2: Learned helplessness • Student quotes: “I haven't posted about questions because I am confident that my answers are wrong.” “I thought I was the only one having problem understanding what was asked in the exam.” “Who am I to post answers?” “The overall environment for [this class] isn't a very help-oriented environment.” Collaboration is a lot harder than you might think. Sometimes.

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