Creating Opportunities for Transactive Exchange for Learning in Performance-Oriented Team Projects

Abstract

Pursuing productivity, students often adopt a divide-and-conquer strategy that undercuts collaborative learning opportunities. In this study, we introduce a task structuring and role scaffolding paradigm to create opportunities for transactive exchange in such performance-oriented tasks and experimentally compare two prompting strategies -- one designed to create a focused discussion and another to intensify transactivity -- while controlling for time on task. We find significant learning gains of each strategy when used separately, but not in tandem.