External and internal sources of cognitive group awareness information: Effects on perception and usage

Abstract

Group selection or group formation is an important but difficult task in learning groups. Group awareness tools collect, transform, and present group awareness information to provide learners, but also teachers with relevant information e.g., about potential learning partners. For these educational tools, the value and usage of the provided information may depend on how it is gathered and where it ultimately comes from. In our study (N = 150), we thus investigate how information from different sources is perceived and ranked. In the study, information about the skills of an anonymous person in a profile was either provided by external sources (teacher assessment, knowledge test result) or internal sources (self-assessment). Results show that information from external sources is perceived as more credible and weighted higher than internal self-assessed information. No difference between information from external personal teacher assessments and external non-personal knowledge tests was found. Hence, it is worth exploring possible effects of other external ratings than teacher assessments to see if these insights are transferable to other contexts.