On measuring team stability in cooperative learning: An example of consecutive course projects on software engineering
This addresses the problem of understanding team dynamics in educational settings for educators and students, but it is incremental as it applies existing concepts to a specific domain.
This paper tackles the problem of measuring team stability in cooperative learning by proposing an approach based on relation strength and social network centrality, using consecutive software engineering course projects as an example. The result shows a weak positive correlation between team stability and learning scores, with 78% of students not valuing team stability importance and 67% of teachers never recommending stable teams.
Cooperative learning theory has shown that stable membership is a hallmark of effective work teams. According to relation strength and social network centrality, this paper proposes an approach to measure team stability reasons in consecutive cooperative learning. Taking consecutive course projects of software engineering in a university as examples, we examine the relation between team stability and learning performance in consecutive cooperative learning from two parts: learning score and learning satisfaction. Through empirical analysis, it arrives at the conclusion that learning score is in weak positive correlation with team stability. Through questionnaire and interviews, it finds out 78% of the students did not value the importance of team stability, and 67% of the teachers never recommend the students to keep stable teams. Finally, we put forward an expected correlation model of learning performance as future work and discuss instability as well.