The Results of an Informal Survey

This author recently conducted an informal survey which looked at attitudes and experiences regarding online learning, collaborative learning, and collaborative online learning. Of the one hundred subjects whose results were tabulated, 81 (or 81%) have participated in an online class, most of them at the college level. Of these, sixteen reported that half of the class work, or more, was done collaboratively in their most recent online class, while 18 reported that there was no collaboration at all. 

As for the type of learning scenario preferred by students, 42 respondents favored the traditional classroom setting, working alone (non-collaboratively). Absolutely no respondents listed online group class work as their preference, while 30 listed it as their least favorite scenario. 

Interestingly, of the 90 people who reported working collaboratively on a class assignment, seventy considered the end result to be at least “pretty good.” 

The results of this survey could lead to further research regarding why students’ attitudes toward online collaborative learning tend to be negative and to investigate what changes could be made to typical online collaborative learning scenarios to improve student attitudes. The open-ended comment boxes allowed survey respondents to provide some excellent feedback, particularly on aspects of group work. Some examples follow:  

"Working in groups sucks. I want to be graded on my own work - not someone elses. ….The professor's salary is not an average of everyone in their department - why should the student's grade be based on group work?" 

"Groups that know each other very well tend to either divide up work evenly and everyone does their 'fair share' or everyone knows that one (or two) people will end up doing all the work anyway, so no one else truly participates. Groups made up of strangers tend to share work more evenly, in my experience, in order to make a good impression."

"When working in groups, I've found it's best to just do as much of the work as possible in the beginning alone, present it to the group, and then see who is reliable to fill in the gaps. Working in groups is a real pain in the neck."


It is worth noting that these last two comments refer to cooperative work, rather than to true collaboration. In any case, it is clear that collaborative learning experiences (computer-supported or otherwise) leave a lot to be desired in many cases. Much work and research remain to be done.