Monitoring in collaborative learning:co-occurrence of observed behavior and physiological synchrony explored

Abstract Although research on collaborative learning suggests that monitoring plays an important role in successful regulation of the collaborative learning process, little is known about how students attend to it together. This study explores monitoring in collaborative learning. Specifically, it studies how students in a group monitor their cognitive, affective and behavioral processes during their collaboration, as well as how observed monitoring co-occurs with their physiological synchrony during the collaborative learning session. Data was collected from 48 Finnish highschool students who were learning about nutrition in groups of three. The session was videotaped and coded in terms of monitoring of cognition, behavior and affect. Students’ arousal was measured as electrodermal activity with wearable sensors and used to calculate physiological synchrony between the students. Three case groups, with priority on the quality of the data, were chosen for detailed analysis. The results indicate that the main targets of monitoring for these case groups were cognition and behavior, while monitoring of affect occurred the least. Most of the student pairs inside the groups showed significant amounts of physiological synchrony. High values of physiological synchrony occurred when monitoring was frequent. Time series analysis showed a weak positive connection between monitoring and physiological synchrony for two groups out of three. These results indicate that physiological synchrony could potentially shine a light on the joint regulation processes of collaborative learning groups