The Impact of Adaptive Role Arrangement and Balanced Role Composition on Group Learning in Distance Education Environment

[[abstract]]Learning through distance education environments is gaining its popularity for adult learners. In network learning environments, learners can work in virtual groups to discuss, interact and produce group products with geographically separated peers. However, they may face problems such as unfair division of labor, incompatibility of interactions within groups or lack of effective interaction. To cope with the problem, employing suitable grouping strategy may promote the demonstration of positive behavior by individuals and enhance the compatibility of interactions and thus improve the collaborative productivity. Based on Belbin's team role theory, the study intents to propose a grouping approach for improving the productivity for collaborative learning. From individual learner's perspective, the proposed approach will adaptively assign a team role to the learner according to his team role preference. From entire group's perspective, the group will be form by maintaining diversity as well as role balance within the groups. The study will further investigate the effect of adaptive role arrangement and balanced role composition on group productivity in a web-based collaborative learning environment. The group productivity will be measured in terms of quality of peer interactions and group product. The results of this study will not only gain insights into the impact of role arrangement and role balance on collaborative productivity, but also will provide valuable recommendations for how to effectively incorporate role arrangement into the design of distance education environments.