While collaboration is an important and key attribute for medical students in order to prepare them to perform well in health care teams, how to effectively develop and assess such skills is challenging. The current widespread practice of using Likert-scale questionnaire only to measure the quantity of collaboration at course and/or program level appears to be insufficient to provide an evidence-base for what counts desirable collaborative learning experience. Drawing on research into student approaches to learning and social network analysis, this study investigates differences in collaborative learning configurations amongst 217 Australian medical students. Based on students' learning orientations (i.e., 'understanding' and 'reproducing') and their choice of collaborations (i.e., whether to collaborate or not, with whom to collaborate, and mode of collaboration), the analyses found five configurations of collaborations differing in a number of features. The most desirable collaborative experience was a configuration of collaborations formed by students with an 'understanding' orientation. This configuration revealed a strong tendency towards intensive pair work with measurable differences in how easy and effectively they collaborated. The results of the study not only have practical implications for teaching and curriculum design for collaborative learning, but also have significant implications for assessing students' collaborative learning experiences.

中文翻译：

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基于医学生学习取向的合作配置

虽然协作是医学生的一个重要和关键属性，以使他们做好准备在医疗保健团队中表现出色，但如何有效地发展和评估这些技能是具有挑战性的。目前仅使用李克特量表来衡量课程和/或项目级别的合作数量的普遍做法似乎不足以为什么是理想的合作学习体验提供证据基础。本研究利用对学生学习方法和社交网络分析的研究，调查了 217 名澳大利亚医学生之间协作学习配置的差异。基于学生的学习取向（即“理解”和“再现”）和他们对合作的选择（即是否合作，与谁合作以及合作模式），分析发现五种合作配置在许多特征上有所不同。最理想的协作体验是由具有“理解”取向的学生形成的协作配置。这种配置揭示了密集结对工作的强烈趋势，在他们协作的容易程度和有效程度方面存在可衡量的差异。研究结果不仅对协作学习的教学和课程设计具有实际意义，而且对评估学生的协作学习体验也具有重要意义。最理想的协作体验是由具有“理解”取向的学生形成的协作配置。这种配置揭示了密集结对工作的强烈趋势，在他们协作的容易程度和有效程度方面存在可衡量的差异。研究结果不仅对协作学习的教学和课程设计具有实际意义，而且对评估学生的协作学习体验也具有重要意义。最理想的协作体验是由具有“理解”取向的学生形成的协作配置。这种配置揭示了密集结对工作的强烈趋势，在他们协作的容易程度和有效程度方面存在可衡量的差异。研究结果不仅对协作学习的教学和课程设计具有实际意义，而且对评估学生的协作学习体验也具有重要意义。