Development of Cognitive Skills of Compassionate Communication for Higher Education's Online Group Work Management

Abstract

This study explored the development of the cognitive skills of compassionate communications (CSCC) among ethnically diverse Sri Lankan HE STEM students in the UK and Sri Lanka during online, task-focused discussion meetings. The psychobiological model of compassion was used as the theoretical model to map the wider socio-economic, political, and historical context in Sri Lanka to the current study. In this mixed-methods, action research study, two groups of four students per group, were selected from five UK universities (Cycle 1). Next, six groups of four students per group were selected from Sri Lankan state universities (Cycles 2 and 3). In both countries, each group’s students participated in a task-focused group meeting, focus groups/interviews, and completed two questionnaires before and then (all this was done again for comparative purposes) after an online 90-minute CSCC intervention session. Screen gaze data of each group member and data collected from two questionnaires were analysed employing SPSS, MS Excel and R. Transcripts of group meetings and focus groups/interviews were analysed using Template Analysis and NVivo (Pro 12). Micro-ethnographic analysis was conducted to identify group behaviours of the participants. In relation to all three Cycles, a comparison of the pre-and post-CSCC intervention quantitative and qualitative findings indicated, post-intervention, a significant increase in a) the use of cameras, and b) sustained screen gaze attentiveness to each other. Triangulating the quantitative and qualitative findings indicated an enhancement of a) prosocial behaviours amongst the participants, b) their educational experiences, c) social experience mediated learning experience, and d) positive impacts of applying shared-virtual backgrounds. These data demonstrated the relationship between the quality of students’ social and learning experiences in the pre-and post-CSCC group work. The study identified how to adapt the CSCC used in offline meetings to the online context. It identified the potential contribution of the CSCC as part of group work pedagogy for repairing historic and still current divisions among HE student communities in Sri Lanka.