Perceived Social Resources Affect Help-Seeking and Academic Outcomes in the Initial Phase of Undergraduate Studies

First-year students are challenged cognitively and socially by the need to integrate into a new environment. This article investigates the role of peer students as a social resource for academic help-seeking to overcome knowledge-related difficulties. Receiving useful help may require close and regular contacts (social embeddedness) as well as awareness about peer’s knowledge (group awareness). Hence, effects of social embeddedness and group awareness on academic success (i.e., achievement, satisfaction, and dropout intention) are expected to be mediated by academic help-seeking. First-semester students in science (n = 49) and engineering (n = 80) have been surveyed. Both study programs differ in occasions to form small groups, which may influence student’s aggregation of social resources. Both social embeddedness (engineering only) and group awareness (both groups) predict successful academic help-seeking. Moreover, the effect of group awareness on student satisfaction and dropout intention is partially mediated by successful academic help-seeking (engineering only). Both social variables can contribute to help-seeking behavior and student’s academic success. The results provide evidence to advice researchers and practitioners to improve academic help-seeking among students.

Improving learning and writing outcomes: Influence of cognitive and behavioral group awareness tools in wikis

Group awareness (GA) tools can facilitate learning processes and outcomes by visualizing different social attributes, such as cognitive and behavioral information about group members. To assist learning and writing in social media, combining various types of awareness information may foster learning processes due to challenges, which are difficult to address by one type of GA information alone. The systematic investigation of GA tool combinations is largely unexplored with GA information often being examined separately or intermixed. To reveal both positive and negative (interaction) effects of providing different types of GA information, we conducted a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment with N = 158 participants. Learners were provided with a wiki learning environment and, except for the control condition, different types of GA tools involving cognitive (knowledge bars) and/or behavioral (participation bars) GA information. GA tool effects were considered at wiki selection, discussion, and article levels. Eye-tracking was used for investigating the attentional effect of the GA visualizations. The results show that both types of GA information have effects on individuals’ selection preference, more strongly with the goal to learn new content than to support other wiki collaborators, which were introduced as within goal scenarios. Also, participants provided with behavioral GA support were more engaged in wiki contributions. However, only the combination of cognitive and behavioral GA information, rather than their separate visualization, had a positive effect on resulting article quality. This highlights the need for a holistic perspective when developing GA tools to improve wiki processes and outcomes.

Actualization of Pancasila in The Implementation of Ethical Democracy in The Global Era

As a value system, Pancasila provides a fundamental basis in the life of the community, nation, and state. The essence of the fourth principle of Pancasila is about democracy which is based on wisdom that is rooted in the moral principle of humanity and divinity. Therefore, according to the Pancasila view, democracy must be based on religious moral originating from God, justice and civilization. Nowadays, by seeing the application of democracy in Indonesia still has many problems, likes freedom as a symbol of democracy is not balanced with its quality, resulting in behavior that is contrary to democracy. Although freedom is guaranteed in the Constitution, oppression, discrimination, marginalization still occurs. Democracy does not only require laws, regulations, and institutions capable of enforcing it, but also democratic attitudes, namely the willingness to build a compromise with the awareness that a person cannot realize all that is desired (a combination of individual awareness and group awareness). True democracy requires good citizens. Therefore, democratic education that integrated through Citizenship Education is absolutely necessary with the aim of preparing citizens who are able to act with democratic ethics.

Initiating scientific collaborations across career levels and disciplines – a network analysis on behavioral data

Collaborations are essential in research, especially in answering increasingly complex questions that require integrating knowledge from different disciplines and that engage multiple stakeholders. Fostering such collaboration between newcomers and established researchers helps keep scientific communities alive while opening the way to innovation. But this is a challenge for scientific communities, especially as little is known about the onset of such collaborations. Prior social network research suggests that face-to-face interaction at scientific events as well as both network-driven selection patterns (reciprocity and transitivity) and patterns of active selection of specific others (homophily / heterophily) may be important. Learning science research implies, moreover, that selecting appropriate collaboration partners may require group awareness. In a field study at two scientific events on technology-enhanced learning (Alpine Rendez-Vous 2011 and 2013) including N = 5736 relations between 287 researchers, we investigated how researchers selected future collaboration partners, looking specifically at the role of career level, disciplinary background, and selection patterns. Face-to-face contact was measured using RFID devices. Additionally, a group awareness intervention was experimentally varied. Data was analyzed using RSiena and meta-analyses. The results showed that transitivity, reciprocity and contact duration are relevant for the identification of new potential collaboration partners. PhD students were less often chosen as new potential collaboration partners, and researchers with a background in Information Technology selected fewer new potential collaboration partners. However, group awareness support balanced this disciplinary difference. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Actualization Of Pancasila In The Implementation Of Ethical Democracy In The Global Era

As a value system, Pancasila provides a fundamental basis in the life of the community, nation, and state. The essence of the fourth principle of Pancasila is about democracy which is based on wisdom that is rooted in the moral principle of humanity and divinity. Therefore, according to the Pancasila view, democracy must be based on religious moral originating from God, justice and civilization. Nowadays, by seeing the application of democracy in Indonesia still has many problems, likes freedom as a symbol of democracy is not balanced with its quality, resulting in behavior that is contrary to democracy. Although freedom is guaranteed in the Constitution, oppression, discrimination, marginalization still occurs. Democracy does not only require laws, regulations, and institutions capable of enforcing it, but also democratic attitudes, namely the willingness to build a compromise with the awareness that a person cannot realize all that is desired (a combination of individual awareness and group awareness). True democracy requires good citizens. Therefore, democratic education that integrated through Citizenship Education is absolutely necessary with the aim of preparing citizens who are able to act with democratic ethics.

Promoting regulation of equal participation in online collaboration by combining a group awareness tool and adaptive prompts. But does it even matter?

Unequal participation poses a challenge to collaborative learning because it reduces opportunities for fruitful collaboration among learners and affects learners’ satisfaction. Social group awareness tools can display information on the distribution of participation and thus encourage groups to regulate the distribution of participation. However, some groups might require additional explicit support to leverage the information from such a tool. Therefore, this study investigated the effect of combining a group awareness tool and adaptive collaboration prompts on the distribution of participation during web-based collaboration. In this field experiment, students in a university level online course collaborated twice for two-weeks (16 groups in the first task; 13 groups in the second task) and either received only a group awareness tool, a combination of a group awareness tool and adaptive collaboration prompts, or no additional support. Our results showed that students were more satisfied when the participation in their group was more evenly distributed. However, we only found tentative support that the collaboration support helped groups achieve equal participation. Students reported rarely using the support for shared regulation of participation. Sequence alignment and clustering of action sequences revealed that groups who initiated the collaboration early, coordinated before solving the problem and interacted continuously tended to achieve an equal distribution of participation and were more satisfied with the collaboration. Against the background of our results, we identify potential ways to improve group awareness tools for supporting groups in their regulation of participation, and discuss the premise of equal participation during collaborative learning.

Mitigating Chronic Diseases during Archaeological Fieldwork

ABSTRACTChronic diseases and preexisting conditions shape daily life for many archaeologists both in and out of the field. Chronic issues, however, can be overlooked in safety planning, which more often focuses on emergency situations because they are considered mundane, or they are imperceptible to project directors and crews until a serious problem arises. This article focuses on asthma, diabetes, and depression as common medical conditions that impact otherwise healthy archaeologists during fieldwork, with the goal of raising awareness of these conditions in particular, and the need to be more attentive to chronic diseases in general. Archaeological fieldwork presents novel situations that put those with chronic diseases and preexisting conditions at risk: environmental hazards, remoteness from medical and social resources and networks, lack of group awareness, and varying cultural norms. As a result, if chronic diseases are not attended to properly in the field, they can lead to life-threatening situations. Managing the risk presented by these conditions requires a group culture where team members are aware of issues, as appropriate, and collaborate to mitigate them during fieldwork. Descriptions of how chronic diseases affect archaeologists in the field are followed by “best practice” recommendations for self-management and for group leaders.