Abstract:
Research into tertiary students' first year experience in Australia
has focused on the extent to which students adapt to university and their levels
of satisfaction, how students adjust to the larger social setting, and issues
of transition from school to university, especially approaches to learning. The
development of performance indicators has involved the widespread introduction
of direct measures of student evaluation of the quality of teaching. Few
studies have addressed the relationship between the effectiveness of the learning
experience and the broader factors that contribute to student satisfaction
or to learning outcomes. The learning of mathematics is often viewed as an
isolated, individualistic matter where one sits alone and struggles to understand
the material and concepts at hand. This process can often be lonely and
frustrating. Small-group collaborative learning can provide an alternative to
both traditional whole-class expository instruction and individual instruction
systems. This paper will provide a rationale for the integration of collaborative
learning into first year engineering mathematics learning and instruction based
on a review of international and Australian literature. It is argued that despite
an overwhelming acceptance of collaborative learning among researchers and
educational organisations, this strategy is not very frequently adopted and
used at tertiary level in mathematics. We believe that collaborative learning
is an ideal way to help with the transition to engineering mathematics at
university from both a social and academic view. It could reduce the large
attrition rate in these courses and improve attitudes to engineering teaching
and learning.
