Innovations in Education and Teaching International
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Are high achievers successful in collaborative
learning? An explorative study of college students’
learning approaches in team project-based
learning
Hye-Jung Lee, Hyekyung Kim & Hyunjung Byun
To cite this article: Hye-Jung Lee, Hyekyung Kim & Hyunjung Byun (2015): Are high achievers
successful in collaborative learning? An explorative study of college students’ learning
approaches in team project-based learning, Innovations in Education and Teaching
International, DOI: 10.1080/14703297.2015.1105754
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2015.1105754
Published online: 04 Nov 2015.
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Date: 25 November 2015, At: 02:22
InnovatIons In EducatIon and tEachIng IntErnatIonal, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2015.1105754
Are high achievers successful in collaborative learning? An
explorative study of college students’ learning approaches in
team project-based learning
Hye-Jung Leea, Hyekyung Kimb and Hyunjung Byunc
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a
Institute for Education and Innovation, seoul, south Korea; bsunmoon university, asan, south Korea; cseoul Women’s
university, seoul, south Korea
ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS
This study analyses how high-achieving students approach team projectbased learning (TPBL) and aims to identify the implications and challenges
of TPBL practice in higher education. After interviewing 32 high-achieving
students and surveying 1022 additional students at a South Korean
university, we found that four factors were particularly relevant to the
challenges of high-achieving students’ TPBL: initiative, goal orientation,
social relationships, and preference for TPBL. The results showed that
high achievers believed that they worked with greater initiative than their
teammates throughout the team project – although mostly alone – and were
distressed by collaboration and prone to abandon collaborative work to
ensure higher grades. These indings indicate that high-achieving students,
despite their high grades, might not successfully learn the competency for
the high level of teamwork and collaboration expected in TPBL, perhaps
because they persist in approaching team learning as individual-oriented
rather than collaborative.
team project-based learning;
high achiever; collaborative
learning; academic success;
college learning
Introduction
High achievers1 in college2 are often deined as high performers with academic success (e.g. GPA)
as shown in measures of cognition, motivation and self-regulation. Compared with low achievers,
high achievers tend to have more positive academic self-perceptions, greater levels of motivation
and self-regulation, superior goal valuation, and more positive attitudes toward school and teachers
(McCoach & Siegle, 2001).
However, high achievers’ social competency in collaborative learning processes is controversial.
Some studies report that high achievers are more self-directed and better at managing relationships
with peers than low achievers (Bain & Bell, 2004), whereas other studies report that high achievers have
diiculties in collaborating efectively with peers, particularly with peers at diferent competency levels
(King, 1993; Lee & Lim, 2012; Salomon & Globerson, 1989). Vaquero and Cebrian (2013) also found that
high-performing students participate in interactive learning only within groups of peers whose level of
academic competency is similar to their own, thus excluding low-performing students; these authors
referred to this exclusive selection process as a rich club phenomenon in the classroom and reported
that failure to engage in the rich club eventually decreased low-achieving students’ communication
activity toward the end of the course.
CONTACT hye-Jung lee
© 2015 taylor & Francis
hyejung@snu.ac.kr
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H.-J. Lee eT AL.
Collaboration with diverse team members is an important competency in society. The abilities
required by society in the current century have shifted from simple skills to more complicated and
diversiied competencies: creative and critical thinking abilities, interpersonal skills, leadership, communication skills and collaborative ability, as well as speciic ield expertise (Dunne & Rawlins, 2000).
Problems in contemporary society often cannot be solved by an individual person but require the
collaborative eforts of experts from diverse ields (Lee & Lim, 2012). Hence, ‘working together in a
team’ is an essential approach to achieving these goals. Scardamalia and Bereiter (2003) indicate that
one approach to educating people to become producers of knowledge is association with such labels
as learning communities, project-based learning and guided discovery. Scardamalia and Bereiter believe
that what a community accomplishes is greater than the sum of its individual contributions.
Such teamwork and project learning competencies have been cited as important learning goals
at a majority of universities around the world; therefore, team project-based learning (TPBL) – a project-based learning approach focused on students’ engagement within a team – has been introduced
to nurture sociability, creative discovery of problems and problem-solving ability (Markham, Larmer, &
Ravitz, 2003). According to National Human Resources Development in Korea, TPBL has attracted educators’ attention as an alternative teaching method that improves the quality of teaching and enhances
social learning.
TPBL is not merely another name for group learning. If group members simply divide task responsibilities according to a task’s physical components (e.g. allotting mammals, reptiles, birds and amphibians
separately to four students for a task investigating vertebrates), it is not critical for them to collaborate
with one another. Collecting all the individual parts after everyone has completed his or her part may
be suicient to complete the overall task. However, TPBL is diferent. A project is deined as a complex task that is based on challenging questions or problems and that involves students in design,
problem-solving, decision-making and/or investigative activities (Markham et al., 2003). Because of
the complexity and diversity required by project-based learning, collaborative teamwork rather than
individual work is often utilised, particularly in higher education. Moreover, project-based learning
is a broader category of instruction than problem-based learning: although a project may address a
speciic problem, it can also focus on areas that are not problems (Moursund, 2003). Therefore, TPBL
nurtures students’ critical and creative thinking by pushing them to create a new project theme that
requires interpersonal and collaborative communication skills based on team collaboration dynamics; TPBL thus extends beyond the mere physical assembly of students into groups to solve a given
problem (Capraro & Slough, 2008).
Numerous studies of TPBL have focused primarily on models, procedures, grouping, strategies or
the advantages/disadvantages of TPBL (Markham et al., 2003; Nihalani, Wilson, Thomas, & Robinson,
2010). However, whether and how students achieve TPBL goals during the learning process remain
under-investigated. Moreover, although many studies examine how low achievement can be improved,
analysing high achievers in college is rarer perhaps because these students are not considered problems.
Because students ultimately work backward by determining irst how they will be assessed and then
by preparing accordingly (Lee & Lee, 2012; Robbins, Lauver, Davis, & Langley, 2004), analysing high
achievers (in comparison with the general student population) at a university may provide a useful
indicator to understand whether and how students achieve course learning goals and, ultimately, to
determine what is assessed and taught in college TPBL courses.
Therefore, this study explores the challenges associated with four-year college-level high achievers in
relation to TPBL to determine whether such students are successful not only in cognitive outcomes but
also in the cultivation of collaborative and communicative competencies, which is one of the learning
goals of the TPBL process. The research questions are as follows:
(1) What are the factors that afect high-achieving students’ experiences and perceptions in TPBL?
(2) Are the TPBL factors of high achievers found in the interviews identiied as GPA-dependent
in larger populations?
INNoVATIoNS IN eDuCATIoN AND TeACHING INTeRNATIoNAL
3
Methods
We used the sequential exploratory mixed method (Creswell, 2009) to analyse high achievers’ learning
approaches in TPBL. We aimed to test the qualitative indings and determine whether the results can
be generalised to diferent samples (Morgan, 1998). First, we collected and analysed interview data
(including e-mail interviews and face-to-face interviews) from 32 high-GPA students (within the top
3% of the student population) who had experiences with TPBL during their courses. We then conirmed
these qualitative results with quantitative data of 1022 students at the university using an online survey
that was developed based on the interview indings.
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Participants
We conducted interviews with second- and third-year undergraduates who received higher than a 4.0
GPA (out of 4.3)3 during two consecutive semesters at S university (a highly ranked university in Korea).
Thirty-two (out of 150) interviewees (59% female, 41% male) who were familiar with TPBL volunteered to
participate; these students’ majors were social science (22%), natural science (15%), engineering (13%),
music and arts (13%), law (13%), humanities (9%), education (9%), and business (6%). In small classes,
students chose their own TPBL teams, whereas instructors assigned students to teams randomly or by
major in large classes. Grouping based on ability/achievement was rare or non-existent.
Qualitative data collection and analysis
The interviewees irst responded via e-mail to written interview questions about their learning styles,
characteristics and study skills that they viewed as factors that contributed to their high achievement.
Two to four interviewers then interviewed each student for 2–3 h to identify what the high achievers
actually did in TPBL and how they perceived TPBL. Semi-structured interview questions were derived
from a typical TPBL procedure based on the previous literature (Capraro & Slough, 2008; Markham et al.,
2003); e.g. how students were doing in (1) creating a theme and planning the project, (2) exploring the
process and (3) producing the inal report. Additionally, at each stage, open-ended questions were asked
about topics such as the decision-making and team-meeting processes, learning diferences between
individual and team assignments, and the primary factors involved in high achievement in TPBL.
All interviews were videotaped and transcribed. The transcribed data were coded and classiied
for domain analysis, taxonomic analysis and compositional analysis (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). Meaning
codes were initially drawn using the open coding method; then, concepts and categories were induced
through the axial coding method. Finally, four factors were derived from iterative discussion and revision
by seven education experts: (1) initiative, (2) goal orientation, (3) social relationship, and (4) preference
for TPBL. The data analysis was veriied by two external experts (education PhDs) with an inter-coder
reliability of .89 and conirmed by quantitative analyses, as described below.
Conirmation of qualitative data from quantitative data analysis
To conirm whether the indings applied only to high achievers or to students in general at the university, an anonymous survey was conducted among all students at the institution. Grounded in interview
data, 22 questions were developed to conirm the factors inluencing high achievement in TPBL. The
questionnaire used a ive-point Likert scale with 5 meaning strongly agree and 1 meaning strongly
disagree. All items were reviewed and revised iteratively and then veriied by seven education experts
for content validity (Appendix 1). To evaluate the construct validity of the coding theme structure, a
conirmative factor analysis (CFA) with maximum likelihood estimation was conducted for the four
coding themes (factors) in MPlus 6.12. The results of the CFA demonstrated an acceptable to good
it with the data: χ2 (97, n = 1022) = 327.10, p < .01, χ2/df = 3.37, CFI = .91, TLI = .89, RMSeA = .05 and
SRMR = .05. The standardised factor loadings were all signiicant, ranging from .39 to .89 for factor 1
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H.-J. Lee eT AL.
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(initiative), .55–.80 for factor 2 (goal orientation), .41–.75 for factor 3 (social relationship) and .34–.82 for
factor 4 (preference for TPBL). The Cronbach’s α for each factor ranged from .71 to .75.
The survey was distributed online to all undergraduate students at the university at the end of
the year. A total of 1111 (out of 12,000) students voluntarily responded, and data for 1022 students
were used for the analysis after excluding missing data and data on students with GPAs lower than
2.0 (these data were uneven and sparse). The student sample was 53.3% female and 46.7% male. Their
majors included natural science (16.9%), engineering (16.0%), social science (13.7%), education (13.4%),
agriculture (12.1%), liberal arts (11.3%), music and arts (6.4%), business (4.6%), law (4.0%) and others
(1.6%). of the student sample, 9.2% had a GPA higher than 4.0, 38.7% had a GPA of 3.5–4.0, 34.6%
had a GPA of 3.0–3.5, 12.5% had a GPA of 2.5–3.0 and 4.9% had a GPA of 2.0–2.5. The overall reliability
(Cronbach’s α) of the questionnaire was .81. To test the mean diferences among the GPA groups, we
conducted an ANoVA after a preliminary test of the data to verify the normality and homogeneity of
the variance assumption.
Qualitative results
Initiative
The results revealed that high achievers in TPBL considered themselves to be good students with high
commitment levels who took initiative throughout TPBL. Regarding topic selection, the high achievers
explained that they prepared possible themes or topics within their interest areas in advance. This
preparation led high achievers to take the initiative on the team from the beginning.
I prepared for the project before the irst team meeting. I spent many days on the theme I was interested in. After
preparing everything at the beginning of the project, I told my team members what I had done and what needed
to be done. Then, I naturally took the lead on the team. (Interviewee #4)
Because I usually prepared for the theme more than others, I spent more time explaining the topic to others. Team
members usually followed my plan. (Interviewee #7)
Furthermore, high achievers could not tolerate the inal team product if the quality did not meet their
own standards. Thus, the high achievers expended more efort to produce higher quality work but were
more likely to perform this work alone rather than in collaboration with others.
I have a very strong need for achievement. When the output is not as good as I want, I cannot stand it. So I polish
up other members’ parts by myself. (Interviewee #10)
In the end, I made the inal report and the PPT ile by myself – maybe because I had to be satisied with the output.
Anyway, I usually inalize projects alone, not with others. (Interviewee #2)
Goal orientation
High achievers showed strong orientation toward their individual goals rather than team goals.
I have to work harder to achieve good results because good grades are important. others don’t work as hard as I
do. If everyone receives good grades, I don’t think that’s fair. (Interviewee #23)
I don’t think that my team members should get poor grades because they contributed little. As long as I am evaluated reasonably, that’s ine. I don’t really care about others. (Interviewee #25)
Although high achievers believed that they had good social relationships, they were more likely to
prioritise their individual work over social activities – perhaps because of their strong goal orientation.
This behaviour is not actually perceived as social, particularly in Korean culture, which typically prioritises group value over individual value.
I try to keep good relationships with friends, but I wouldn’t be able to get good grades if I hang out with them.
So when I have something to study, I’m not going out even if they need me. I feel guilty, but I can’t help it.
(Interviewee #1)
INNoVATIoNS IN eDuCATIoN AND TeACHING INTeRNATIoNAL
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Social relationship
The high achievers in TPBL believed that they maintained positive social relationships but also mentioned having diiculties in resolving conlicts. Some students abandoned the process of discussion
to reach consensus because they perceived that process as a waste of time.
Looking back, rather than having a discussion, I just gave up or just let it go the way the other party wanted
because I think it’s a waste of time. (Interviewee #29)It would be good if we shared responsibilities evenly because
everyone had to commit to the project, but making everyone share the responsibilities perfectly evenly was not
only impossible but also stressful. (Interviewee #15)
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Preference for TPBL
The students discussed the advantages and disadvantages with respect to preferences and the fairness
of TPBL. However, some high achievers confessed that they believed the assessment of team project
learning was not fair. Some high achievers complained that they received the same grade as other team
members who contributed less to the project. By contrast, some high achievers did not care whether
other team members ‘got a free ride’ – as long as they (high achievers) obtained a good grade. In either
case, high achievers’ primary concern was their own grade (see the citations of Interviewees #23 and
#25 above). Furthermore, some high achievers indicated that they preferred individual learning over
team-based learning.
We couldn’t agree on our ideas because of each individual’s strong opinions. So stressful … so I prefer an individual
task to a team task. (Interviewee #15)
Quantitative results
To conirm the indings from our qualitative data, we examined the correlation between GPA and each
factor for the full university sample. The means, standard deviations, reliabilities and intercorrelations
are shown in Table 1. The last column of Table 1 indicates that all factors except Preference for TPBL are
signiicantly correlated with GPA.4
A one-way ANoVA was conducted to test diferences based on GPA groups. There were signiicant
diferences among GPA groups of learners for the Initiative (F(41, 017) = 26.933, p < .01), Goal orientation
(F(41, 017) = 19.387, p < .01, and Social Relationship (F(41, 017) = 4.594, p < .05) factors. For the Initiative
and Social Relationship factors, Schefé’s post hoc analysis was conducted. The initiative values for the
over 4.0 GPA group (M = 3.46, SD = .57, p < .05) were signiicantly higher than those for the under 3.0 GPA
group (M = 3.00, SD = .55, p < .05). The over 4.0 GPA group (M = 3.74, SD = .67, p < .05) and the 3.5–4.0 GPA
group (M = 3.70, SD = .55 p < .05) reported Social Relationship values that were signiicantly higher than
those of the under 2.5 GPA group (M = 3.39, SD = .66, p < .05). For the Goal orientation factor, Dunnett’s
T3 was used because of the homogeneity of variance assumption. The over 4.0 GPA group (M = 3.94,
SD = .71, p < .05) and the 3.5–4.0 GPA group (M = 3.62, SD = .58, p < .05) had signiicantly higher values
for the Goal orientation factor than the under 3.5 GPA group (M = 3.43, SD = .58, p < .05) as well as the
2.5–3.0 GPA group (M = 3.38, SD = .51, p < .05) and the 2.0–2.5 GPA group (M = 3.20, SD = .76, p < .05).
Preference for TPBL did not present any signiicant diference among GPA groups. See Figure 1 for a
visual representation of each of the four factors based on GPA groups.
Table 1. Means, standard deviations, correlations between factors and correlation of tPBl Factors with gPa (n = 1022).
Factors
Initiative (I)
goal orientation (G)
social relationship (S)
Preference for tPBl (P)
***p < .001.
I
−
.28***
.40***
.12***
G
S
−
.25***
.21***
−
.06
# Items
9
6
4
3
α
.79
.77
.78
.68
Mean
3.16
3.53
3.64
3.10
SD
.57
.62
.60
.49
Correlation with GPA
.30***
.27***
.13***
.05
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H.-J. Lee eT AL.
Figure 1. Factors of S university students’ team project learning approaches by gPa categories: 5 (4.00–4.30), 4 (3.50–3.99), 3 (3.00–
3.49), 2 (2.50–2.99), and 1 (2.00–2.49).
Consequently, the quantitative results showed that the three TPBL factors from the interview
depended on GPA across the university, thus conirming that three of the four categories were GPA
factors in TPBL, except Preference for TPBL.
Discussion
Both the qualitative and quantitative results show that high achievers appear to have positive and successful experiences in TPBL, as reported in previous studies (McCoach & Siegle, 2001) and as indicated by
their harder work with strong goal orientation and by having good relationships. However, the results
also reveal that earning high grades may not relect successful TPBL, particularly regarding the acquisition of social and collaborative competencies through peer-to-peer communication and interaction
because high achievers indicated that they took initiative with little/no peer-to-peer collaboration to
ensure achievement of high grades.
The high achievers in this study were likely to prepare for projects on their own and then persuade
team members to agree with their ideas from the beginning rather than patiently listening to and
negotiating with others to resolve conlicts. Well-prepared high achievers with strong goal orientation
were more likely to dominate team project situations (King, 1993; Salomon & Globerson, 1989), and
they may have unwittingly led other students to miss learning opportunities within a social context.
Indeed, the high achievers believed that their hard individual work represented a sacriice and greater
contribution to the team than spending an ineicient (in their opinion) time on peer interaction. This
type of individualistic attitude in TPBL continued through project completion, when the high achievers
revised the inal product alone until it met their individual standards. The justiication given for their hard
work and efort was meeting their individual goals rather than fulilling the team’s goals. This approach
might be considered individual learning within a group environment, which can hardly be considered
efective social collaborative learning. This tendency increased with students' GPAs.
According to Spencer and Spencer (1993),5 a high level of social competency includes collaborating,
solving interpersonal conlicts and generating team products through communal participation that are
superior to products by individuals. In this study, despite high achievers’ harder working with greater
initiative in TPBL, they failed to communicate efectively with their teams or to resolve conlicts. If they
failed to achieve the high levels of teamwork and cooperation competency and initiative competency
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INNoVATIoNS IN eDuCATIoN AND TeACHING INTeRNATIoNAL
7
in collaboration that TPBL intends to nurture, they cannot be considered successful TPBL learners.
Therefore, we question whether the reported marker of success (i.e. high grades) truly represents real
success and ponder what achievements should be considered to indicate successful TPBL.
Failures in TPBL might be inluenced by societal cultures that tend to avoid criticism and seldom
voluntarily reveal individual opinions (Phuong-Mai, Terlouw, & Pilot, 2005). Thus, although they believe
they have good social relationships, high-achieving students may have diiculties in resolving conlicts, which can lead to failures in learning teamwork competency. However, recent studies report
that learning style is determined more by the particular institution than by societal culture (Lee, Lee,
Makara, Fishman, & Hong, 2015; Lee, Lee, Makara, Fishman, & Teasley, 2015; Lee & Siegle, 2008; Niu &
Sternberg, 2003). Although cultures inluence education, students’ study behaviours and styles derive
primarily from the instruction style and assessment of particular institutional policies and curricula
(Niu & Sternberg, 2003).
In this context, this study raises a question: what is assessed in TPBL? Although TPBL is applied as
a teaching method to nurture collaborative synergy in addition to cognitive enhancement, what is
assessed might only be the product of individual cognitive achievement rather than the collaborative
process. Moreover, according to French, Walker, and Shore (2011), high achievers’ preferences for working alone are not natural characteristics but the consequence of environments that do not support
appropriate pedagogy for these students. Rather, teaching methods and evaluation criteria decide
students’ behaviours and learning styles during coursework. Instructional design, including grouping
methods, is also critical because if there is a dominant student in a group, both the dominant student
and the other group members may miss the collaborative learning opportunity (Nihalani et al., 2010).
Shin, Jung, and Shin (2008) suggest that college academic achievement is more inluenced by process
factors (experiences and opportunities during higher education) than by input factors (pre-university
education/background/culture). Therefore, in providing appropriate direction and support for instructors, educational institutions are more accountable for proper TPBL than cultural or individual factors.
Regarding direction and support for instructors, proper evaluation should relect not only the inal
product but also the collaborative learning process. Peer assessments may be a good strategy for assessing the TPBL process, as students may value their peers’ social collaboration abilities as more important than their cognitive contribution to TPBL (Lee & Lim, 2012). Furthermore, TPBL courses should
be designed to include tasks that are too demanding for a single student to accomplish. If a task is
suiciently manageable for a single high-achieving student to inish alone, then the student might not
willingly collaborate with others because such teamwork could be considered ineicient. Therefore,
more careful instructional design (including assessments, assignments and the collaborative process)
should be formulated (Niu & Sternberg, 2003).
Conclusion
This study aimed to explore what high achievers do and perceive in TPBL, how they collaborate in TPBL,
and thus whether they succeed at TPBL. The results showed that high achievers might not succeed in
achieving the collaborative learning goals of TPBL despite their high grades, which might ofer the
illusion of successful collaborative learning. High achievers might unwittingly overlook TPBL goals by
working individually, and instructors might neglect the collaborative learning process during evaluation.
This study has certain limitations: the data were collected at a single university, potential bias from
self-selection and self-reporting was not considered, correlation relationships do not necessarily indicate
causality, and there could be factors in addition to or besides the four factors addressed herein when
considering the relatively small size of the correlation coeicient. However, the consistent results from
both the qualitative and quantitative analyses have meaningful implications for improving TPBL practices in higher education. Future studies can investigate institutional contexts in diferent cultures with
more TPBL class variables (e.g. course characteristics, grouping or team size) and/or identify additional
TPBL factors; these more comprehensive indings could improve the understanding and application
elucidated herein of TPBL in higher education.
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H.-J. Lee eT AL.
Notes
1. High achievers in this study are operationally deined as students with high GPAs.
2. We use the term college here to refer to a four-year post-secondary educational institution (university) at the
undergraduate level.
3. In this study GPA scale, ‘A’ is 4.0, and ‘A+’ is 4.3.
4. The means and correlations with GPA appear to be low generally. But considering that east-Asians, especially
Koreans, tend to rate themselves lower on a range of self-report items compared to Westerners (Chen, Lee, &
Stevenson, 1995) and Asians show middle response styles while Westerners show extreme response styles (Harzing,
Köster, & Zhao, 2012), the results are signiicant.
5. Spencer and Spencer (1993) suggested that teamwork and cooperation competency can be categorised into seven
levels, from level 0 or 1 for passive participation (performing only one’s own roles) to level 6 or 7 for reinforcing
the team and solving conlicts. Moreover, the highest level (6–7) of initiative competency includes encouraging
others to participate in teamwork, whereas the lowest level (0–1) of initiative competency refers to performing
work individually.
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Disclosure statement
No potential conlict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Hye-Jung Lee has worked as an education expert for more than a decade after she inished her PhD in educational
Technology at Seoul National university. She served in the practical ield as Director of e-Learning Support at Seoul
National university, and in the academia as an assistant research professor of Centre for Teaching and Learning at Seoul
National university in Korea and a visiting scholar at university of Michigan in the uSA. She is also widely known as
the book author of ‘Who Gets an A+ at Seoul National university?’ that is published from Institute for education and
Innovation where she works as Director General. Her research ield includes quality assurance in teaching excellence,
e-learning, and e-text communication.
Hyekyung Kim is an assistant professor in Institute of Innovative education at the Sun Moon university in South Korea. She
teaches on educational technology courses, supports curriculum quality management system and promotes a number of
strategic initiatives. Her research interests are around the continuous quality improvement for educational system, such
as curriculum, course, learning, teaching, etc.
Hyunjung Byun is an assistant professor in Institute of General education in Seoul Women's university. She is currently
teaching ‘creative thinking’ and ‘creative problem solving’ classes. Her research area includes creative problem solving,
teaching and learning in higher education, instructional design and learning technology. She is also in charge of developing
creativity education programs for undergraduates in creativity centre at the university.
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Appendix 1. Questionnaire items for the factors.
Factors
Initiative
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Goal orientation
Social relationship
Preference for TPBL
a
Questionnaire items
(1) I tend to take on more responsibilities than other team members
(2) I often end up making revisions to team projects on my own after collecting parts from each
team member
(3) I am usually the leader on team projects
(4) I usually prepare my ideas for the project in advance of team project meetings
(5) I spend a lot of time discussing a project topic with my team members to make sure that we have
the best project possible
(6) I make an efort to understand all the parts of the team project, even parts I’m not responsible for
(7) I have asked instructors for feedback regarding whether a team project was headed in the right
direction
(8) I prefer roles in a team project to be assigned to individuals based on their capability rather than
equally dividing the work among all members
(9) I work harder than others
(10) college gPa is an important indicator of my sincerity of life
(11) gPa in college is very important for career development in the future
(12) If I earn a poor score, I feel bad and it hurts my pride
(13) I believe I can get a reward by working hard
(14) I can control my gPa by my eforts
(15) I sacriice hanging out with my friends if I need to study for my classes
(16) I make an efort to have meaningful relationships with my classmates
(17) overall, I have good relationships with others
(18) I have a good relationship with team members even after the project is over
(19) When I don’t understand something clearly, I ask my peers about it
(20) team project learning is worthwhile, although it is challenging
(21) I prefer courses with individual tasks rather than team projectsa
(22) I do not think team projects are graded fairly given the individual efort that I devote to the
projecta
the scores for these items were reversed to maintain consistency with other items, as they had a negative connotation (prior to
reversal) regarding tPBl.