Education vs. Culture

W. M. Waite

M. H. Jackson

A. Diwan

P. M. Leonardi

University of Colorado

Boulder, CO USA

Field Experiment

• Observe and interview for baseline

• Perform intervention• Observe and interview

for result

• 2 classes/semester since fall, 2000

• Over 130 interviews, standard protocol

• Field notes from participant observation

• Unobtrusive data: student tool use, records

Performance Aspects of Culture

• Ritual: practices in which members regularly engage

• Sociality: norms for how people interact with one another

• Politics: how a member influences others• Enculturation: how people acquire skills to

behave as competent members• Passion: what should a member value

Ritual

• Procrastinate when approaching tasks– Instantiates participant as an expert– Hinders group interaction

• Begin project without understanding details– “Diving in” and “tinkering”– Hinders shared understanding

• Work individually

Sociality

• Boldly display one’s own opinions, and disqualify opinions of peers– Affirms one’s status as an expert– Hinders group discussion

• Deny peers technical and emotional support– Don’t give up and don’t ask for help– Hinders group cohesiveness

Politics

• Things are easier for me than for others– Perpetuates one as a prodigy– Group members who don’t “get it” quickly

become discouraged

• Constant comparison with others– Serves to validate expertise– Can have positive or negative effect in a group

Enculturation

• Learn to construct an in-depth knowledge base– Builds expertise– Supports effective teams who need experts

• Ignore process– Individual has more flexibility– Hinders effective group decision-making

Passion

• No evidence of passion in the interviews or observations– Hinders group performance when there is no

shared goal about which they are passionate

• Did not observe any capstone class– Capstone projects often do result in passion

about the shared goal

The Prototypical Engineer

• Maverick: is a lone human tinkering with technology

• Macho: has constant need for respect, to always have the right answer

• Technophile: designs adroitly, has expert knowledge of theories and science

• Non-communicator: discourages social interaction, technical discussions OK

Group Work Strategies

• Sequential segmentation: I work on it for a while, then pass it along to you

• Parallel segmentation: break it up and everyone do a piece

• Natural selection: we’ll each implement it and take the best

• Collaboration: interact during the task

Is Collaboration Important?

• Collaboration is needed to support the other methods of working in groups– Shared agreement on who is to do what when

• People learn judgment best in groups– Talk each other out of unshared biases

• Collaboration is a tactic against 3OI– Non-overlapping 2OI

Interventions

• Conversational classroom– Teach students to grant authority to peers– Teach students to take on authority granted by a

peer

• Tree design– Show that process is determined by task

• PL Detective– Adjust grading criteria to reward collaboration