Building Common Ground in Collaborative Learning: Exploring Higher Education Student’s Experiences Across Two Tasks

Ostendorf, Lucie Anna (2025) Building Common Ground in Collaborative Learning: Exploring Higher Education Student’s Experiences Across Two Tasks. Research Master thesis, Research Master.

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Abstract

Collaborative learning is widely regarded as a fundamental component of student-centred pedagogy in higher education, as it encourages active engagement, critical thinking, and the development of interpersonal skills. However, while collaborative learning offers opportunities for deeper engagement and skill development, students often encounter difficulties such as unequal participation and differing levels of commitment, which can hinder the learning experience. Understanding the interpersonal processes that influence collaboration is essential for making group assignments truly effective. This qualitative, interpretive study investigated how students experience and enact the development of common ground during playful collaborative tasks and how this process differs between open- and restricted-tasks. The participants were 12 students in higher education. Data consisted of seven individual interviews and four collaboration narratives, analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Four themes were constructed, illustrating how students make sense of the task, coordinate their efforts through dialogue, interpret each other’s perspectives, and engage with the evolving group product. The findings show that common ground is not a fixed starting point but a dynamic achievement shaped through dialogues, reflections, and interactions with groupmates and the task. The study highlights how constraints, storytelling, embodied actions, and previous knowledge all play a role in shaping shared understanding. Restricted tasks can enable faster decision-making, but can limit negotiation due to role division resulting from time pressure. Open tasks can foster deeper engagement and shared meaning-making, but can also lead to a less effective work environment

Item Type:	Thesis (Research Master)
Supervisor name:	Mascareno Lara, M.N.
Degree programme:	Research Master
Differentiation route:	Lifespan Development and Socialization [Research Master]
Date Deposited:	17 Jul 2025 09:22
Last Modified:	17 Jul 2025 09:22
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/5612

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