Essence of Online Collaborative Learning: Emotional Themes and the Development of Professional Identity

The organic chemistry online collaborative assignments (OCA) are an international collaboration between American and Canadian universities. Organic chemistry students are paired with one or more international partners. Through the use of technology they must help each other work through the assignments by using spoken words to guide the other student through organic chemistry problems. This comparison whether the students have a consistent understanding of the language of chemistry challenges them to be consistent. While developing a new learning style and learning to communicate with the proper terminology of a new discipline are the main objectives, developing a new learning style can be difficult. Having the responsibility of being part of an important team, communicating in a new professional language, and having a multitude of ways to reflect on one’s own communication, learning, accountability, and identity can develop many different emotions for the students. At the end of the semester students have a final reflection about their experience. From these reflections we use thematic analysis to compare how the most common emotional themes describing the experience develop different themes of a student’s professional identity.