Exploring Teaching and Course Assistants’ Interventions with Groups During Collaborative Problem-Solving

Abstract

This study explores the task-related interventions of a teaching assistant and three course assistants with six small groups during collaborative problem-solving activities in undergraduate engineering classrooms. Results indicated that the majority of the interventions were not preceded by monitoring the group activity and were initiated by asking the groups a general question about their activity or progress on the task. The majority of the interventions were dominated by feedback moves which suggests that the teachers were using direct instruction strategies more than dialogic strategies when intervening with the groups' work.