Nuria Hernández Nanclares

The Role of Cultural Background and Team Divisions in Developing Social Learning Relations in the Classroom

A common assumption is that students prefer to work together with students from similar cultural backgrounds. In a group work context, students from different cultural backgrounds are “forced” to work together. This might lead to stress and anxiety but at the same time may allow students to learn from different perspectives. The prime goal of this article is to understand how international and home students from different cultural backgrounds build learning and work relationships with other students in and outside their classroom using an innovative quantitative method of Social Network Analysis in a pre-post test manner. In Study 1, 50 Spanish and 7 Erasmus economics students worked in self-selected teams. In Study 2, 69 primarily international students in a postgraduate management program in the United Kingdom worked in randomized teams. The results indicate that in Study 1 learning ties after 14 weeks were significantly predicted by the initial team division and friendship ties. The seven international students integrated well. In Study 2, learning ties after 14 weeks were primarily predicted by the team division, followed by initial friendship ties and conational friendships. Although international students developed strong (multinationality) team learning relationships, international students also kept strong links with students with the same cultural background. As the initial team division had an 8 times stronger effect on learning ties than cultural backgrounds, these results indicate that the instructional design of team work has a strong influence on how international and home students work and learn together.

A Longitudinal Analysis of Knowledge Spillovers in the Classroom

In classroom teaching, teachers make increased use of collaborative learning and educational technology to enhance the learning experience of students. Most researchs on team-learning focuses on learning within teams. However, to what extent do learners share knowledge inside and between teams during a course? This study took place in a third-year course on international economics, whereby 57 students were divided into 11 teams and learned and collaborated in an innovative blended learning environment. A mixed-method approach of social network analysis (SNA) techniques was used to measure learning within and between teams in a longitudinal manner. Afterwards, a qualitative critical event recall of the teacher was used in order to reflect upon the results of the SNA.

Understanding Emerging Knowledge Spillovers in Small-Group Learning Settings: A Networked Learning Perspective

There has been a rapid growth in the use of small groups in teaching and technology-supported networked learning environments to engage students in active learning. Recent research highlights that students learn not only from their group members but also from network connections outside their group, which we refer to as knowledge spillovers. We combined three perspectives of collaborative learning, computer-supported collaborative learning and networked learning in order to understand how these knowledge spillovers emerge in small-group learning settings, thereby providing an integrated theory, practice and pedagogy.