A quasi-experimental study tested the effect of lecture-based courses and team-based courses on students’ motivation and learning. The results show that students in general were more autonomously motivated and competent in the team-based courses, relative to the lecture-based courses, but also less amotivated and more externally regulated.

Background The ability to learn collaboratively and work in teams is an essential competency in both educational and healthcare settings, and collaborative student activities are acknowledged as being an important part of the pedagogical approach in higher education and teaching. The course that was the focus of this research, a 15-ECTS-credit online course in philosophy of science, ethics, and research methods, was offered online as part of 11 master’s-level health programmes at a university in Norway. Collaborative learning in combination with digital teaching tools was the preferred pedagogical approach in the online course. The aim of the study was to describe, explore and discuss how the students collaborated in small groups in an online course to learn. Methods We performed six focus groups and 13 individual interviews from February 2018 to May 2019, conducting a qualitative case study with a content analysis of the data collected. The participants were master students in the same faculty at a university in Norway. All the included participants had fulfilled the 15 ECTS credit course. Results Our study revealed that the collaboration in small groups resulted in three different working processes, depending on the students’ ability to be flexible and take responsibility for their own and common learning. The three different working processes that emerged from our data were 1. joint responsibility – flexible organization; 2. individual responsibility – flexible organization; and 3. individual responsibility – unorganized. None of the groups changed their working process during their course, even though some experienced their strategy as inadequate. Conclusions Our study showed that despite similar factors such as context, assignments and student autonomy, the students chose different collaboration strategies to accomplish the online course learning objectives. Each group chose their own working process, but only the strategy 1. joint responsibility – flexible organization seemed to promote collaboration, discussion, and team work to complete the complex assignments in the online course. The result from our study may be helpful in designing and planning future online courses; hence online learning requires a focus on how students collaborate and learn online, to gain knowledge and understanding through group discussion.

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BackgroundThis study presents an example of collaboration between two higher education institutions: one in Norway, a high-income country, and one in Sudan, a low-income country, in developing an entry-level physiotherapy education programme in Sudan. The institution in Sudan had minimal theoretical and practical knowledge in physiotherapy. The study examined the factors important for the success of the bilateral collaboration.Material and methodsWe analysed written documents produced in the project from 2007 to 2012 in a qualitative study by using systematic text condensation. We identified vital factors for partner institutions and participants in ensuring a physiotherapy education programme of high quality.ResultsThese factors were within seven topics: project arrangements, collaboration relationship, curriculum development, administration of the bachelor programme, capacity building, academic community and infrastructure.ConclusionWe identified several factors that we hope can be valuable for similar projects. Some factors are similar to those shown by other studies. These are probably general factors that are important for such collaboration.

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