Student experiences of cross institutional collaborative learning

Collaborative or peer-supported learning involves students engaging in communal tasks to share information and experiences, explore concepts and critically evaluate each other’s work to co-create a shared understanding. We have previously shown that collaborative learning activities help students develop effective learning communities within individual units of learning. However we are also interested to determine the extent to which these communities can be developed across different student cohorts. We established two cross-institutional groups to explore their potential for supporting learning outside of modular boundaries and the impact on student experience. Active participants submitted reflective logs documenting their experiences and information was collected from other students to explore potential barriers. A constructivist grounded theory content analysis approach is currently being used to identify emergent themes from this pilot to inform the development of future cross-institutional collaborative learning initiatives. Key emerging themes include timing, amount of group work and peer-teaching, and academic input