%0 Journal Article
%T Online Course Student Collaboration Literature: A Review and Critique
%A Lauren Jean Johnsen
%A Maura R. Cherney
%A Michelle Fetherston
%J Small Group Research
%@ 1552-8278
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1046496417721627
%X University online course enrollment continues to rise at a rate higher than that of traditional, face-to-face university education, and several benefits exist to creating a collaborative online course environment. Therefore, a need exists to critically consider existing research about small group work in online courses. The present article provides a meta-synthesis of 41 articles related to this topic. This meta-synthesis includes a review of literature followed by a discussion of critiques and directions for future research about online course student collaboration. Findings from this meta-synthesis include a lack of consistent definitions within literature about student collaboration online, methodological issues in existing empirical studies, and the lack of interdisciplinary contribution to online course small group literature
%K online
%K student
%K group
%K collaboration
%K review
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1046496417721627