{"title":"Identifying Group Work Experiences That Increase Students' Self-Efficacy for Quantitative Biology Tasks.","authors":"Melissa L Aikens, Alexander R Kulacki","doi":"10.1187/cbe.22-04-0076","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Quantitative skills are a critical competency for undergraduates pursuing life science careers. To help students develop these skills, it is important to build their self-efficacy for quantitative tasks, as this ultimately affects their achievement. Collaborative learning can benefit self-efficacy, but it is unclear what experiences during collaborative learning build self-efficacy. We surveyed introductory biology students about self-efficacy-building experiences they had during collaborative group work on two quantitative biology assignments and examined how students' initial self-efficacy and gender/sex related to the experiences they reported. Using inductive coding, we analyzed 478 responses from 311 students and identified five group work experiences that increased students' self-efficacy: accomplishing the problems, getting help from peers, confirming answers, teaching others, and consulting with a teacher. Higher initial self-efficacy significantly increased the odds (odds ratio: 1.5) of reporting that accomplishing the problems benefited self-efficacy, whereas lower initial self-efficacy significantly increased the odds (odds ratio: 1.6) of reporting peer help benefited self-efficacy. Gender/sex differences in reporting peer help appeared to be related to initial self-efficacy. Our results suggest that structuring group work to facilitate collaborative discussions and help-seeking behaviors among peers may be particularly beneficial for building self-efficacy in low self-efficacy students.</p>","PeriodicalId":56321,"journal":{"name":"Cbe-Life Sciences Education","volume":"22 2","pages":"ar19"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/f5/4d/cbe-22-ar19.PMC10228271.pdf","citationCount":"5","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cbe-Life Sciences Education","FirstCategoryId":"95","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.22-04-0076","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION, SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 5
Abstract
Quantitative skills are a critical competency for undergraduates pursuing life science careers. To help students develop these skills, it is important to build their self-efficacy for quantitative tasks, as this ultimately affects their achievement. Collaborative learning can benefit self-efficacy, but it is unclear what experiences during collaborative learning build self-efficacy. We surveyed introductory biology students about self-efficacy-building experiences they had during collaborative group work on two quantitative biology assignments and examined how students' initial self-efficacy and gender/sex related to the experiences they reported. Using inductive coding, we analyzed 478 responses from 311 students and identified five group work experiences that increased students' self-efficacy: accomplishing the problems, getting help from peers, confirming answers, teaching others, and consulting with a teacher. Higher initial self-efficacy significantly increased the odds (odds ratio: 1.5) of reporting that accomplishing the problems benefited self-efficacy, whereas lower initial self-efficacy significantly increased the odds (odds ratio: 1.6) of reporting peer help benefited self-efficacy. Gender/sex differences in reporting peer help appeared to be related to initial self-efficacy. Our results suggest that structuring group work to facilitate collaborative discussions and help-seeking behaviors among peers may be particularly beneficial for building self-efficacy in low self-efficacy students.
期刊介绍:
CBE—Life Sciences Education (LSE), a free, online quarterly journal, is published by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB). The journal was launched in spring 2002 as Cell Biology Education—A Journal of Life Science Education. The ASCB changed the name of the journal in spring 2006 to better reflect the breadth of its readership and the scope of its submissions.
LSE publishes peer-reviewed articles on life science education at the K–12, undergraduate, and graduate levels. The ASCB believes that learning in biology encompasses diverse fields, including math, chemistry, physics, engineering, computer science, and the interdisciplinary intersections of biology with these fields. Within biology, LSE focuses on how students are introduced to the study of life sciences, as well as approaches in cell biology, developmental biology, neuroscience, biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, and proteomics.