Fostering Collaborative Learning Through Postgraduate Group Projects in Statistics Education

Master of Science (MSc) research projects are an important constituent of learning in the postgraduate journey for most curricula. This article reports on the implementation of MSc group work projects for the final postgraduate thesis. To evaluate and measure students' attitude towards this idea, a two-level approach was designed: first a focus group to gauge students’ attitudes and second, a detailed survey incorporating comments from the focus group. The survey addresses learning styles, attitudes, and issues of plagiarism and collusion. Results show that most students favour the group MSc project, whereas concerns have been raised about possible plagiarism/collusion issues and group arrangements. Results allowed us to develop detailed guidelines for MSc group projects that will be offered in the next academic year.