On measuring team stability in cooperative learning: An example of consecutive course projects on software engineering

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to measure team stability in cooperative learning, examines its relation to learning performance, and finds that students and teachers often overlook its importance.

Contribution

It introduces an approach to quantify team stability based on social network analysis in cooperative learning contexts.

Findings

Learning score has a weak positive correlation with team stability.

78% of students do not value team stability.

67% of teachers do not recommend maintaining stable teams.

Abstract

Cooperative learning theory has shown that stable membership is a hallmark of effective work teams. According to relation strength and social network centrality, this paper proposes an approach to measure team stability reasons in consecutive cooperative learning. Taking consecutive course projects of software engineering in a university as examples, we examine the relation between team stability and learning performance in consecutive cooperative learning from two parts: learning score and learning satisfaction. Through empirical analysis, it arrives at the conclusion that learning score is in weak positive correlation with team stability. Through questionnaire and interviews, it finds out 78% of the students did not value the importance of team stability, and 67% of the teachers never recommend the students to keep stable teams. Finally, we put forward an expected correlation model of learning performance as future work and discuss instability as well.