In the social sciences many students consider learning statistics and research methodology as difficult and uninteresting; they report high fear of failure and hold negative attitudes towards statistics (Friedman, Friedman, & Amoo, 2002). Many attempts have been made to change this negative attitude, but usually with little success. For example, based on socio-constructivism students were made actively responsible for their own study process (Reiser, 2001; Simons, van der Linden, and Duffy, 2000), but according to Järvelä and Volet (2004) more and more evidence is found that educational innovations fail because of students' lack of motivation (cf. Boekaerts & Martens, 2006). This can be changed by restructuring the pedagogical organisation in order to fulfil the basic needs defined by Self determination Theory (SDT, Ryan & Deci, 2000). This theory predicts that by increasing students' sense of autonomy, competence and relatedness, intrinsic motivation will be enlarged and lead to more deep level learning, more persistence, curiosity and better study results (as shown for example in physical education by Ntoumanis, 2003). For instance, providing students with more control over their learning process by changing the pedagogical situation and thus resulting in more perceived autonomy may lead to more intrinsic motivation. Another way to influence the quality of student learning is by using collaborative learning. To date this is often done with the help of computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL). Research has shown that a good procedural organisation is required to implement collaborative learning techniques, for example to avoid the free rider effect (Strijbos, Kirschner, & Martens, 2004).

This paper tries to combine both approaches in the pedagogical organisation of higher education courses by using collaborative learning and SDT-related measures. Because some studies reported international differences between the effects of (CS)CL and variables related to SDT, it was decided to compare two studies in Germany and Netherlands. In both studies the content (an introductory course on statistics and research methodology) and the students (bachelor students of social sciences) were the same. In order to enhance motivational processes in group learning according to the SDT an online tool was developed based on an existing instrument, the QWIGI questionnaire (Minnaert, Boekaerts, & de Brabander, 2002; Boekaerts & Minnaert, 2003). QWIGI enables the measurement of group based feelings of relatedness, autonomy and competence as well as intrinsic motivation. The online version added a feedback modus, so that students got a tailored visual feedback of their scores compared to the group scores.

Following SDT, the central research question is: does the use of -and feedback on an online motivational questionnaire stimulate group processes, perceived group efficiency and thus intrinsic motivation and study results?

This was studied by two between subjects experiments, one at Leiden University (n=63) and one at Bremen University (n=100). The first results show that the automated feedback did not lead to significant results between the groups on interest, sense of competence, sense of autonomy, and sense of cooperation. Multilevel analysis of these variables shows that their development over the weeks follows courses that are very much individually determined. The use of QWIGI versus not using this online tool did influence intrinsic motivation negatively in the Leiden sample. In the Bremen sample using the tool did influence intrinsic motivation positively in one course, but negatively in another.

These results will be discussed in detail as well as practical implications to improve collaborative learning in the difficult subject matter of statistics for social sciences.

References

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