Structuring positive interdependence (role, reward, or both) did not affect posttest achievement for undergraduate business majors in asynchronous online small group work¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2003 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Evidence quality · No study behind this claim is a peer-reviewed article with a DOI: it rests on an ERIC document (a report, conference paper or thesis). It is kept because 9 design pages cite it; treat it as a lead to check, not an established finding.

Subclaims¶

q3 i? In one experiment with 280 undergraduate business majors, students in role, reward, role-plus-reward, and no-interdependence groups performed similarly on the posttest, with no significant differences by type of interdependence or affiliation motive. → Brewer 2003

Evidence¶

Brewer 2003¶

Brewer, S. A., & Klein, J. D. (2003). Small Group Learning in an Online Asynchronous Environment. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED484997

q3 · i? · causal · r2

Experiment with 280 undergraduate business majors blocked by high/low affiliation motive and randomly assigned to role, reward, role-plus-reward, or no interdependence triads; achievement measured by individual posttest. "Overall achievement was about 71% on the posttest"; no effect size printed.

"Results indicated no significant differences in achievement by type of interdependence in small group work, or by affiliation motive (see Table 1). Overall achievement was about 71% on the posttest"

Studies bearing on this claim¶

Does structuring online group discussion (roles, group rewards, a student-led group task) raise achievement, or only participation and attitudes? This table gathers the studies behind this claim and the 4 narrower claims that bear on it: 2 distinct studies (1 causal, 1 design), q2–q3, 0 of 2 with an effect size coded. One row per study, codes as each entry records them; no effect is averaged and no verdict is drawn. Built by scripts/synthesize_claim.py from eval/synthesis/; a row that looks wrong is fixed on the claim it comes from.

Discussion¶

One experiment (Brewer & Klein 2003, 280 undergraduate business majors in triads) is recorded. An earlier version of this page described the participants as adult reentry students; the evidence entry does not say so, so the scope here follows the entry. The null result is a non-significant difference with no effect size printed, which does not establish that the conditions are equivalent.

Related Claims¶

• Higher numbers of interactions are associated with higher posttest scores in asynchronous online small group work — related
• In one experiment with undergraduate business majors in asynchronous online small groups, reward interdependence raised agreement that group work was beneficial and generated better ideas — related
• Type of interdependence shifts the nature of interactions: no-structure groups show the most cognitive interactions, role groups the most group processing, and reward groups the most off-task behavior — related
• All three structured interdependence conditions produce higher agreement that team members' sense of obligation to contribute aided learning, compared with no structured interdependence — related
• In school studies, cooperative and peer-learning methods that reward groups on every member's individual learning raised achievement more than methods without such rewards — related
• Cooperative Learning Improves Achievement — a broader claim this one bears on
• Small-group learning improves undergraduate STEM achievement — a broader claim this one bears on
• In one study of undergraduate business majors in asynchronous online small groups, learners with high affiliation motive agreed more than low-affiliation learners with six of twelve attitude statements about group work — related
• Kindergarten triads sharing one computer with three mice and interdependent roles enhanced social skills — related