小規模私立大学でのグループ学習による情報教育の実践

Abstract

Facing a diversity of learners in the universal access stage of higher education, and increasing demand for computer literacy education following the ongoing rapid progress of information technology, effective teaching methods are required in computer literacy education in universities. The authors explored collaborative learning as a method to achieve more effective learning in computer literacy courses, in order to cope with the diversity of learners faced, especially by small private universities. We examined collaborative learning in groups combined with competition among the groups. The formation of groups is an important issue in collaborative learning, and we compared two ways of group formation, i.e., groups based on classification by learner's ability, and groups averaging the abilities of their members. We also studied the design of problems/projects asked to students considering their motivation. Over a period of four years in practice the effectiveness of such collaborative learning was observed. With adequate facilitation considering ways of group formation, we found that similar results were achieved by students in both group formations.