Achievement Goals and Team Leadership in Online Small Group Learning

Abstract

Group learning is a common used learning approach in online education. However, there are limited studies addressing how to support online groups from the perspectives of motivation and team leadership. This study attempts to understand how achievement goals and leadership styles could influence collaboration experience and individual performance. The results showed that learners who adopted mastery goals tended to engage in group learning through promoting member relationships and group cohesion whereas leaders who adopted performance goals tended to concentrate on helping group complete tasks. High level of relationship-orientated leadership made performance-approach goal orientation a significant predictor of collaboration experience and reduced the negative effect of performance-avoidance goals on final grade. This study finally provides insights to online group activity design.