Linda Thorsen Bond

Women Negotiating Collaborative Learning:: Making the Grade Linda Thorsen Bond

Although it is thought that women learn well in collaborative settings, research at the university level indicates women may be disadvantaged by group work. Because they want to "make the grade," in mixed groups women step up and do more than their share to make collaborative projects successful. The study isolates four ways women negotiate collaborative learning in a university course. (1) Women take group work seriously and consider it to be very important. (2) Women are often leaders in group work. Sixty-four percent of the women in this study and only two percent of the men said they are usually the leader in collaborative learning situations. (3) Women end up doing more than their share of the work, in addition to having the leadership role. (4) Earning good grades is very important to the women studied, and they are willing to work harder than anyone else in a group to earn them.