Motivation and collaborative behavior: an exploratory analysis

The motivating effects of collaborative learning have long been argued, however a careful analysis of the relationship between the motivation orientation of a student and perceptions of himself, his partners, his collaborative behaviors, and learning in a collaborative context have not been as thoroughly explored. In this paper we present an exploratory analysis of data from a collaborative learning study from the standpoint of motivation type of students and their partners. Overall, what we see is that a student’s own motivation orientation may color their perception of the exchange of help in the collaboration, sometimes obscuring the reality of the help actually exchanged.