Research Spotlight: Learning through Collaborative Data Projects: Engaging Students and Building Rapport  

Matthew Pietryka, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Political Science at Florida State University, co-authored the article “Learning through Collaborative Data Projects: Engaging Students and Building Rapport,” in the journal Education Sciences alongside Rebecca A. Glazier, Ph.D. The following summary was written by Martín Gandur (Ph.D. Political Science ‘25). 

In “Learning through Collaborative Data Projects: Engaging Students and Building Rapport,” Matthew Pietryka, Ph.D., and Rebecca A. Glazier, Ph.D. propose a series of collaborative assignments to engage students and foster rapport between the students and the instructor, even in large classes.  

Research Spotlight - Matt Pietryka, Ph.D., Learning through Collaborative Data Projects: Engaging Students and Building Rapport.

The authors’ article describes and evaluates the effectiveness of a series of collaborative assignments that help instructors to both engage students and build rapport with them. Using student feedback in four different college courses, the authors show that students reported that they learned more and found the assignments more enjoyable compared to a typical college assignment. Also, students reported that receiving individualized feedback about their contributions made them more interested in the material and made them feel like the instructor was more invested in their learning. These survey results indicate that the assignments succeeded at both engaging students and at building rapport. 

While most instructors are interested in better engaging their students in order to help them learn, engaging students can be difficult. Moreover, following recommendations for how to engage students is often a resource-intensive task for instructors. The collaborative data projects proposed by the authors provide instructors with a resource-effective way to engage students while also building rapport even in large, online classes. 

The collaborative assignments designed by the authors seeks to engage students as active participants in data-centric research projects that were bigger than just their contributions. Moreover, as students contributed to a larger project, they received an individualized report on their input, providing substantive feedback. The authors’ article also provides software code that reduces the start-up costs of implementing this method, which allows instructors to provide individualized feedback to every student—even in the largest classes. 

To read the full report, click here. To learn more about the FSU Department of Political Science, visit coss.fsu.edu/polisci.

APA Citation:

Pietryka, M. T., & Glazier, R. A. (2022). Learning through Collaborative Data Projects: Engaging Students and Building Rapport. Education Sciences12(12), 897. MDPI AG. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/educsci12120897