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Quality of College Students' Experiences During Cooperative Learning

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Abstract

This study examined the quality of college students' experiences during cooperative learning (CL) tasks. Undergraduate educational psychology students were assigned to small groups to discuss how they could apply important psychological principles to teaching—learning projects. In addition to responding to questionnaires measuring goal orientations, attitudes toward CL, and perceived ability in educational psychology, they were interrupted during a small-group discussion using Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, and Whalen's (1993) experience sampling method to measure their quality of experience. Results indicated that quality of experience was predicted by perceived skill for the task, as well as importance of the task. Measures of pre-existing individual differences were not predictive.

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Correspondence to Sarah E. Peterson.

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Peterson, S.E., Miller, J.A. Quality of College Students' Experiences During Cooperative Learning. Social Psychology of Education 7, 161–183 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SPOE.0000018522.39515.19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SPOE.0000018522.39515.19

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