The authors tested the dynamics of collective action tendencies of student teams when trying to accomplish a shared goal, with a focus on the impact of member ties and team member interaction and emotional responses on team performance. The results show the direct and indirect impacts of both positive and negative group emotions on the student…

Personality traits are believed to affect both learner ability and group dynamics and cohesion. Another central element influencing how individuals perform in group settings stems from their motivation to collaborate. This article explores the relationship between personality traits, motivation for collaboration and participation of university…

While learners of a second language (L2) are increasingly interacting in small groups as part of a communicative methodological paradigm, very few studies have investigated the social dynamics that occur in such groups. The aim of this study is to introduce a group work dynamic measuring instrument and to investigate the relationship between group…

The aim of this article is to analyse the conditioning factors and opportunities that influence teamwork among teachers at a Catalan university. The creation of new academic identities based on a culture of mutual and continuing learning are essential if teacher teams are to be encouraged. A descriptive methodology was used, based on a case study…

Robotics provide the opportunity for students to bring their individual interests, perspectives and areas of expertise together in order to work collaboratively on real-world science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) problems. This paper examines the nature of collaboration that manifests in groups of elementary and middle school…

In representation-rich domains such as organic chemistry, students must be facile and accurate when translating between different 2D representations, such as diagrams. We hypothesized that translating between organic chemistry diagrams would be more accurate when concrete models were used because difficult mental processes could be augmented by…

Updating and extending the work of O'Leary-Kelly, Martocchio, and Frink (1994), with this meta-analysis on goal setting and group performance we show that specific difficult goals yield considerably higher group performance compared with nonspecific goals (d = 0.80 plus or minus 0.35, k = 23 effect sizes). Moderately difficult and easy goals were…

This study presents a continuing investigation of influences on outcomes achieved by students working in groups of three on tasks related to chance and data. Earlier research described final mathematical outcomes and identified 17 factors influencing three types of short-term outcomes for groups working in an "isolated setting." The current report…