A NETWORK APPROACH TO INTER-GROUP LEARNING DIFFUSION

Learning based in groups is often considered by teachers the best way to enrich the classroom and transforms it into a learning environment. For that, teachers commonly use small groups to engage students in a more active learning process where they learn from and together with their fellow group members. Yet, in collaborative learning contexts learning units are not only the individual students but also the small working groups. Students organized in small groups may develop intra-group relations (i.e. within groups) but also inter-group relations (i.e. between team, also referred to as knowledge spillovers) that reinforce the learning experience in the classroom.

Although most literature in group research focuses on learning within groups, recently several authors have argued that a better understanding of the conditions of inter-group learning is needed, as students and groups are learning formally and informally outside the boundaries of their own group. In order to analyse intra & inter groups’ behaviour, several researchers use a so-called social network approach. Thus, the group’s position and its relationships inside the larger network can affect how groups perform and SNA offer methodological tools for investigating connections between a group and its external context. In a collaborative learning space, the students take advantage of the interaction opportunities inside their groups but information could became stuck within the group opening holes in the general flow of information.

In this paper, we aim to provide researchers and teachers an innovative methodological approach to measure, visualize and understand how some students connect across the structural holes in the classroom over time, while others primarily continue to learn within their own group. The paper applies the concept of non- redundant information to measure, in two case-studies, efficiency and constraint index. These indexes, with the help of social network visualizations, will show how teachers and researchers can detect the potential access to information diversity in their classroom and better understand intergroup knowledge spillovers.