The relation of learners’ motivation with the process of collaborative scientific discovery learning

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the influence of individual learners’ motivation on the collaborative discovery learning process. In this we distinguished the motivation of the individual learners and had eye for the composition of groups, which could be homogeneous or heterogeneous in terms of motivation. The study involved 73 dyads of 10th‐grade learners. Learners worked in dyads on separate screens in a shared discovery learning environment. They communicated using a chat box. A self‐report questionnaire was used to measure the motivational beliefs of learners. We used on‐line measures to measure communicative and discovery activities of the learners. Task value seems to be an important motivational construct with regard to the composition of dyads. The results show that the performance of a dyad existing of a highly and a lowly motivated learner can be influenced positively by the highly motivated peer.

Keywords:

• motivation
• collaborative scientific discovery learning
• on‐line measures
• CSCL
• simulations

Notes

1. Collisions was developed by Hans Kingma and Koen Veermans (University of Twente). SimQuest was developed in the SERVIVE‐project which was coordinated by University of Twente.

2. Partly translated by Sabine Severiens.