A Case Study of International Business students’ Experiences with Exploratory Talk Ground Rules in Online Group Work

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how students experience and describe group work in an online course in international business (IB) after being introduced to Barnes’ exploratory talk ground rules (ETGRs) which promote norms for dialog that encourage participants to share ideas and information and to think together. This study examines the dialog in groups of fourteen IB undergraduates attending a four-week online course in International Management. Initially, the students received briefings about the ETGRs and wrote self-reports throughout the course, on which we conducted a thematic analysis. Our findings show that students who engage with and apply the ETGRs describe more shared responsibility for collaborative learning in the group work, a greater interest in exploring the perspectives of group members, and overall, more positive learning experiences. This implies that making the ETGRs transparent is considered beneficial for social interactions in group work. However, the teacher plays a key role in creating a class environment conducive for collaborative learning, and preconditions for productive group work, including a good assignment structure and proper technology preparation, must be met. The findings and their implications are discussed herein.

KEYWORDS:

• Exploratory talk
• higher education
• online teaching
• collaborative learning
• thematic analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martha Clabby Kjølseth

Martha Clabby Kjølseth, MBA, MSc (Business Management and Research) is an Assistant Professor at the USN School of Business and Management, University of South-Eastern Norway. Kjølseth's research interests are in the cross cultural management and cooperative online international learning domains including mentoring, collaboration, and virtual exchange.

Fazilat Siddiq

Fazilat Siddiq, PhD, is a full professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway. Siddiq's research interests focus on collaborative problem solving in digital environments. Her research is published in a variety of journals. including