TABLE 3.
Excerpts per theme from in-depth interviews
| Themes | Quotes | H/L | HG/LG |
|---|---|---|---|
| Learning gains from group activities; engagement, content knowledge acquisition, understanding concepts, and application of the acquired knowledge | “We all study differently and so if I thought of something in a certain way, but they didn’t get it, I could verbalize and explain it to them.” (Monica) | H | HG |
| “I’d be like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on’ and she’d be like, ‘Oh, it’s this and this,’ like she would explain it to me. I asked her and so she elaborated on … went into a little deeper context with me and tried to explain in it my terms in a way that the teacher couldn’t.” (Ethan) | L | HG | |
| “I guess I feel like the tests in this class were more like application, like applying what you’ve learned to a different situation.”(Amy) | L | HG | |
| “We all had very deep discussions about each question and why the answer was what it was.… discussing it with my group members, we learned more just discussing the information with each other.” (Ethan) | L | HG | |
| “Group work definitely helped and engaged me more with the learning.” (Brian) | L | LG | |
| “I could ask ‘What was your answer?,’ ‘How did you get that? I don’t understand’… we always do that. ‘This one is correct and you answered this one, it was wrong.’” (Karen) | L | LG | |
| Positive experiences with group members | “I let them (group members) know ‘the activities will be on the test. You should understand it.’ I took my notes and shared it with other group members. Then I cheered them to respond to the practice quizzes.” (Ginger) | H | HG |
| “To be able to talk to people about it and kind of work through it and figure it out. It was like a nice little support system. You didn’t feel like you were alone in the class.” (Beth) | H | HG | |
| “You can ask your questions to your group especially in a such a huge class.” (Nora) | H | LG | |
| “I could text them, they help. Email them, they help … I mean, any time I don’t understand because someone there is always going to be able to help you.” (Karen) | L | LG | |
| “‘I really don’t understand this, I need help really bad’… I will text one of them and say, ‘Can you explain this to me real fast?’ they usually respond really quickly.” (Karen) | L | LG | |
| Contrasting perceptions about the purpose of the group activities | “It was more real-life situations which I found interesting because it was more relatable and like scientific theories that would apply to you … based on how it would affect something in real life.” (Beth) | H | HG |
| “Why do that and spend an hour and going through all of that stuff when I could just finish it in ten minutes.” (Jenn) | L | HG | |
| “Something doesn’t seem very important and sound silly. I don’t see any relationships with my real life.” (Zoe) | L | LG | |
| Attitudes and behaviors negatively influenced group activities | “I just think she didn’t know how to really make her point without overriding everybody else.” (Chloe) | H | LG |
| “I know she might want to do it herself but that’s not what we’re supposed to do in a group… I couldn’t contribute or did something more … she never offers.”(Ruth) | L | LG | |
| “We’re going to get her to work, give her the opportunity to do stuff and ‘Hey, Anne, we’re kind of confused on this, will you come over here and help us?’ and so she came over and then we went through one part of the worksheet and then Tory and I kept saying stuff and she’d be like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too.’” (Amy) | L | HG | |
| Individual group member assumed responsibility to complete group work | “[Other group members said,] ‘Oh, I hope you guys know a lot for the group test because I don’t really know anything’ basically telling me that ‘Oh, I hope you know a lot so I can write off your intelligence and get a good grade.’” (Nora) | H | LG |
| “[My group members] just sent me all copy and paste. They didn’t do any research and follow any APA format. But they simply sent me the link of the resources and said, ‘here is the link.’ So I have to go back to the website that they’d found and had to summarize them.” (Min) | H | HG | |
| “They’d send me like not very good information and I’d have to redo their whole thing. If they sent me their portion of the things, I had to go through all of their information and put it together… once I actually put a document together and submitted it, they probably never even look at it. They didn’t help me in a way that could have helped them because they never really even looked at it.” (Ethan) | L | HG | |
| “It’s more difficult to get all the members to contribute equally especially if someone is … doing all the work and then other people feel like they can relax, ‘You’re doing all the work and I can just sit back and get a hundred’ sort of like the prisoner effect.” (Ruth) | L | LG | |
| Groups did not collaborate but merged and submitted outside group work | “To one person and then that person usually puts into a document and then sends it back to us to review and then we all kind of tweak it and make sure it’s right before that person submits in the Dropbox.” (Ginger) | H | HG |
| “After everyone does their own part they submit the document back onto Facebook, we attach it and so someone can continue from the other person. But we usually don’t edit it.… we don’t have someone like edits or synthesizes.” (Emma) | L | LG |