Dear Dr. Oh,

I think it depends on if you want to express it in terms of competence (capability, attitude, knowledge, skill, experience, creativity) changes of learners or in terms of embeddedness (social relationships, peer contacts, role playing, level of cooperation, media usage, scope of sharing, leadership, communication profile, problem solving) changes of learners.

Kind regards,

I.H.

Dear Jeonghun  Oh,

Notably, collaboration skills refer to mutual  engagement of learners in problem solving contexts in which through a coordinated effort  they seek to find a solution to the problem at hand. As such, collaborative interactions involve shared goals, negotiation of meaning, and a high level of interactive interdependence. Depending on the nature of the topic you want to explore, as professor Horvath rightly observes, you can use either a qualitative or a quantitative approach to gauge collaboration skills. In point of fact, to measure the impact of collaboration skills on different aspects of language learning (i.e., changes of learners) you need a quantitative approach, whereas for investigating sharing information or attitudes about the utility of such skills, a qualitative approach is more appropriate. Alternatively, there are mixed method approaches as well. The following link can hopefully satisfy what you are looking for.

Best regards,

R. Biria

https://broadleafconsulting.ca/uploads/3/4/0/8/.../tools_for_measuring_collaboration.pdf

Generally speaking quantitative research can be considered if you are clear about your research questions and your hypotheses are well formulated, so that you are able to confirm or reject them, and if you want to generalize the results to a larger population.

If, on the other hand, you are in an early stage of research in the knowedge domain, and existing literature is contradictory on issues you regard important, than an exploratory research approach is advisable and you may consider qualitative research to "understand"  the issues at hand. Your research will concentrate on a few cases - possibly even only one - and generalization will not be on your agenda.

There is another option: Mixed Methods. You will employ qualitative and quantitative methods in a planned and structured manner, especially when combining the results.

Creswell, John (2013). Research design. Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method approach. 4th edition. Los Angeles: Sage.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/825558677

Creswell, John; Plano Clark, Vicki (2011). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. 2nd edition. Los Angeles: Sage.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/558676948

True qualitative research does not involve measurement, but for other purposes, you could convert the qualitative data to quantitative data (i.e., quantize it). This would involve building a formal scoring system for your qualitative data. In particular, you could define a set of behaviors that indicate collaboration skills, along with a codebook, which would let you count every time that one of these behaviors occurred. 

This is also known as quantitative content analysis, and there are a number of good book on this topic, including one by Krippendorff and one by Neuendorf. I have attached a book chapter that gives an introduction to this approach.

In case you want to take it quantitatively, you should define the construct, learners' collaborative skills, in terms of variables and measure it by using either standard scale or by developing on your own. The standard empirical study methodology would apply in this case as well.

Sounds like a very interesting and important topic to understand further. Depending on your research question, you will be guided to either a qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods study. For quantitative studies, many others have already answered so I will address the qualitative side.  If you want to know how the students FEEL about their collaboration or to understand their examples, stories of collaboration, a qualitative study would make sense. Good luck with the work!

As mentioned above by David Morgan, Krippendorff is a very good source for content analysis, I attach some texts. Search also for the following Departmental Papers, University of Pennsylvania:

Krippendorff, K. (2004). Reliability in Content Analysis: Some Commen Misconceptions and Recommendations.

Krippendorf, K. (2005). The Social Construction of Public Opinion.

A P.S. to qualitative research: you don't want to be on a tight budget or under time pressure. Qualitative research is more demanding on resources than quantitative research.

Hello Jeonghun Oh,

You are investigating a very interesting question – is there a difference in the success of collaboration within one culture versus success when the effort includes multiple cultures. One consideration to add to your analysis is to include, as a covariate, the type of interface used in intra versus intercultural collaboration. Face-to-face versus internet collaboration may have a strong influence on collaborative outcomes (quantitative) and/or perception of collaborative success by participants (qualitative). If you measure the effect of these two interface types you will be able to address how influential they are on the collaborative experience of participants. If the effect is insignificant, you will be able to remove that covariate from your analysis of intra vs intercultural collaboration. If the interface type is significant, you can include that information in the discussion of your results.

 Alternatively, you could change your experimental design prior to the start of your project to eliminate this covariate. You could do this by having both the intra and intercultural collaborations take place over the internet.

 Hope this is a help.

Beth Olsen

I had another idea for an experimental design you might want to consider. You could set up two intracultural treatment groups: one collaborates over the internet, the other collaborates face-to-face. This would investigate the question of whether or not the type of interface made a significant difference in the effectiveness of intracultural collaboration.

 In a separate analysis, you could use the same intracultural treatment group collaborating over the internet to compare to an intercultural treatment group collaborating on the internet. This would investigate the question of whether there is a significant difference in the effectiveness of collaboration in intra versus intercultural settings.

This would conserve your resources (time and money) and give you two independent projects.

You may be interested in reading, "Investigating Factors Affecting Group Processes in Virtual Learning Environments"

As part of the research, I had included Collaboration Factors such as learning, interaction, motivation, attitude, contribution, and teamwork as part of the conceptual framework.

The research also included development of an instrument that had learning and social interaction, and process satisfaction as two of the constructs.

I have made the full text of the article available from ResearchGate.

Citation of the article is:

Hazari, S., & Thompson, S. (2015). Investigating factors affecting group processes in virtual learning environments. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 78(1), 33-54.

Article Investigating Factors Affecting Group Processes in Virtual L...

Dear Dr Oh,

This is a very interesting question. I think you could apply Mixed Methods. You might want to consider, in particular, first video recording and, then, a questionnaire.

Best

Nice Contribution V. Beth Kuser Olsen