Impact of instructor intervention on the conceptual understanding of undergraduate engineering students working in a group

While there are various studies on how instructors’ intervention impacts the group work of students, there is little research on what should be the goal of an intervention and how the corresponding interaction pattern flows from it. This preliminary study examines interaction patterns between instructors and students during an intervention and how they impact the conceptual understanding of the students. Video data was drawn from four discussion sections in a required undergraduate engineering course involving two teaching assistants (TA) and four course assistants (CA). To achieve this, I analyzed how different instructors intervene in groups of students during different scenarios. I draw conclusions on how the interaction pattern of the instructor and the students enables the intervention to be focused on the conceptual understanding of the task and what could potentially influence these interaction patterns. The study showed that the TAs observation of students before intervention does affect the interaction between TA and students. Group discourse around conceptual understanding during the intervention did not significantly impact the interaction but a high correlation between conceptual understanding discourse and teacher-student interaction suggests a further need for research on the topic.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Curriculum and Instruction

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2021

Author dc:creator

• Rajarathinam, Robin Jephthah

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mercier, Emma
• Goldstein, Molly Hathaway
• Tissenbaum, Michael

• monitoring
• intervention
• conceptual understanding
• collaboration
• CSCL

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2021 Robin Jephthah Rajarathinam

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/110736

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/110736