The Impact of Collaborative Learning on Theoretical Understanding in Electrical Engineering Laboratories: A Quasi-Experimental Study

This Research Full Paper presents findings from a quasi-experimental study on the effectiveness of collaborative learning in improving theoretical understanding within a large electrical engineering laboratory course. While there are several studies that report positive student responses and performance gains with collaborative learning in higher education STEM laboratories, as far as we know few studies include control groups and prepost-test to ascertain the impact of such approaches on students’ perception and performance gains.142 students were surveyed on their perceived theoretical understanding under three experimental settings: an experimental group involving 90 students in a magnetic fields laboratory with collaborative learning (E), a control group involving the same students in an electric fields laboratory (C1) and a second control group involving a different group of 52 students who went through the same laboratory as E without collaborative learning (C2). The study found that students’ perceived theoretical understanding in E improved significantly before and after collaborative learning (d=1.05). Significant difference in perceived theoretical understanding between E and C1 was found but this result needs to be interpreted with caution as students perceived C1 to be significantly more difficult. Nevertheless, students in C1 also feedback that collaborative learning would have aided their theoretical understanding. Furthermore, students’ perceived theoretical understanding in E was significantly higher than those in C2 when laboratory sequence was taken into account (d=0.394), suggesting that collaborative learning was helpful for theoretical development. The scores achieved by a subset of these students in the E (n=69) and C2 (n=20) setting were also compared. A non-significant increase in performance were found with E, suggesting that short-term performance gains might be limited.The qualitative feedback from students suggest that knowing the responses of their peer enabled them to understand the concepts from many perspectives and identify their mistakes. Furthermore, peer discussion provided affirmative feedback to some students which helped them gain confidence in their understanding. Hence, it is prudent for the study to conclude that including collaborative learning in engineering laboratory has provided students with a sense of much needed support with no negative consequence on theoretical knowledge gain.