The Efficacy of Collaborative Learning Groups in an Undergraduate Statistics Course

. Assessment of the efficacy of collaborative learning group techniques is frequently subjectively based and often relies on casual comments from students or faculty. Despite this shortcoming, instructors searching for new and effective ways of teaching quantitative courses continue to experiment with collaborative pedagogy. This study examined the relationship between student performance on collaborative learning group assignments and students' examination scores in statistics. The results both challenge and support the efficacy of collaborative learning groups and suggest that faculty modify such techniques when evidence of student achievement cannot be empirically linked to the collaborative experience.