Student Autonomy in Collaborative Learning: Effects of Meeting Time and Team Consistency

Collaborative learning is an evidence-based instructional practice that has been widely used in higher education, but it is not a silver bullet and requires careful design and implementation to yield the desired benefits. Prior work has also shown that collaborative learning is especially effective for female students, who are historically underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM), and Computing fields, suggesting a promising prospect for applying collaborative learning in these disciplines. In spring and fall of 2022 at a large public university, an upper-level required computer science course using collaborative learning was offered in a hybrid format, with great flexibility in meeting time (students could meet and collaborate at the 'instructor-scheduled' meeting time, or they could pick their preferred 'student-scheduled' time) and team consistency (students were encouraged, but not required, to work with a fixed team throughout the semester). To understand the effects of meeting time preference and team consistency, we measured students' learning outcomes (exam performance) and experience (sense of belonging and satisfaction about team dynamics in collaborative learning), and conducted linear regression analyses. We also investigated whether the effects were different for male and female students. We found that students' meeting time preference had no significant effect on their exam performance, sense of belonging, or satisfaction, and the non-significant effects were homogeneous for both gender groups. We also found that having a consistent team had significantly positive effects on exam performance and sense of belonging, but no significant effect for satisfaction. Moreover, the effect of team consistency on exam performance was significantly stronger for female students than male students. Our findings justified the option to give students meeting time flexibility since it did not hurt their learning experience and outcome, and encouraged exploring effective approaches to forming consistent teams that make students intrinsically want to work with them. The gender difference in effects of team consistency on exam performance aligned with previous literature and served as evidence to use collaborative learning in computing and STEM classrooms.