Relationship between students’ perception of the internal dynamics of their collaborative learning contexts, effort made and academic performance.

Abstract

The major thrust of the study was to find out the relationship between students’ perception of the internal dynamics of their collaborative learning context, effort made and their academic performance in E.P. College of Education, Bimbilla. One hundred and fifty students from the college were selected for the study through the purposive sampling technique. Questionnaire was used to obtain brief demographic information such as gender and age necessary for the study and the research questions. The correlation between students’ performance in English, Mathematics, and Science on one hand, and their perception of the internal dynamics of collaborative learning context on the other hand was compared. SPSS computer software was used for the data analysis. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to analyze data for the correlations because all the data were measured on six point likert-scale. Although most respondents had high positive perception (90%) about the internal dynamics of their collaborative learning context, there was no correlation between academic performance and the internal dynamics variables except in the case of equal participation versus performance in science which has a correlation of 0.231, significant at 0.05. Academic self-efficacy was found to be moderately related to the way students perceived the internal dynamics of their collaborative learning context. It was also found that students’ academic effort and grades in Mathematics, English and Science were hardly related.