A STUDY OF SOCIAL FACTORS IN ACTIVITY-BASED ACTIVE LEARNING CLASSROOM CORRELATED TO STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE

1 online resource (59 pages) : PDF

2017

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Social behaviors of students play a significant role in the classroom atmosphere and also the way it impacts students’ learning interests. In addition, socially acceptable behaviors are generally preferred by students in group-based classes. But on the other hand, students’ socially disruptive behaviors lead to different kinds of problems, such as a) Interfering in classroom learning and learning environment; b) Weakening students’ respect for the academic environment; c) Impairing students’ academic and intellectual development; d) Decreasing students’ engagement, commitment and retention; e) Finally, worst case scenarios - social isolation, depression and other mental problems. Considering the issues, the study of social behaviors of students in an ABAL (Activity-based active learning) class is an important research subject. Unfortunately, not much attention has been given to the study of social factors impacting students’ learning. Therefore, in this work, we are going to study the social factors of students in an ABAL class that could impact students’ performance. In our study, we formulated and evaluated Group Cohesion score along with its traits (Goal Settings, Communication, Trust, Accountability, and Recognition), social factors (from open-ended answers) and sentiment analysis (from LIWC tool). By taking into consideration of our ABAL classroom approach, we provided results correlating these points with academic performance. In addition, we found that Trust trait and three social factors (C1, A1 and R3) collectively, had a high and positive correlation with academic performance, while the remaining factors had a less significant correlation, from the observations we have conducted in our ABAL class. However, when we analyzed data sample with a weekly comparison of student’s performance with the independent variables from our study, we found that there exists no strong correlation between them.

masters theses

Education

M.S.

ABAL
Activity-Based Active Learning Class
Correlation
Group Cohesiveness
Sentiment Analysis
Social Factors

Information Technology

MOHSEN, DORODCHI

BOJAN, CUKIC
NIU, XI
LIPFORD, HEATHER
SHAIKH, SAMIRA

Thesis (M.S.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2017.

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Ravikumar_uncc_0694N_11603

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/etd:1094