The role of sense of community and motivation in the collaborative learning: an examination of the first-year design course

The demand for creating collaborative learning environments in technology education highlights the needs to enhance student collaborations in their learning process. Aiming to increase individual contributions of students to develop a more collaborative learning environment, this study investigated the relationships among sense of community, student motivation, and student contribution in a technology design course. The results revealed the mediating role of sense of community between student motivations and student contributions to group projects in a collaborative learning environment. The indirect mediation effect between intrinsic motivation and student contribution was stronger than the indirect mediation effect between extrinsic motivation and student contribution. This study also confirmed that during collaborative learning, academic achievements of students can be predicted by their contributions to their groups (B = .267, p < .001), extrinsic motivation (B = .40, p = .035), and amotivation (B = −082, p < .001). However, intrinsic motivation can also influence academic achievements through student contribution in a collaborative learning environment.