2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Collaborative learning is often used in active STEM pedagogy, yet not all students may experience group work as equally inclusive. Structured role assignments, such as facilitator, recorder, or manager, have been proposed as a way to promote balanced participation, accountability, and belonging within group activities (GAs). However, empirical evidence on whether such roles reliably enhance students’ social and affective engagement remains limited, particularly in large, digitally mediated classrooms.

This study investigates how structured role assignments influence undergraduate students’ sense of belonging, inclusion, and participation patterns in a large-enrollment computational STEM course. The study was conducted in a numerical methods course featuring weekly digital GAs completed in assigned groups. Each GA required students to collaboratively complete coding and conceptual tasks within an online platform that implemented distinct access-based roles. For the first seven GAs, all groups operated with roles enabled. For the following four GAs, half of the groups retained roles (“role-on”), while the other half worked without them (“role-off”). This quasi-experimental design allowed for within-course comparisons controlling for instructor, content, and schedule.

Data sources included post-GA surveys measuring multiple dimensions of sense of belonging (e.g., inclusion, group cohesion, and willingness to collaborate again) and behavioral metrics derived from platform logs, including submission timing and group activity duration. Statistical analyses combined multiple regression, mixed-effects modeling, and Mann–Whitney nonparametric tests to accommodate non-normal distributions in behavioral data.

Preliminary findings suggest that removing roles did not produce significant changes in students’ reported sense of belonging or collaboration quality. Similarly, participation timing and duration metrics showed no systematic differences between role-on and role-off groups. Exploratory analyses of gender minority subgroups revealed small and inconsistent differences in submission patterns, indicating that turning off role structures did not measurably affect participation once group norms had been established.

Overall, role structures in this context did not measurably alter students’ sense of belonging or participation behaviors. These results highlight the importance of examining contextual factors that shape when and how structured roles may or may not influence inclusion in collaborative STEM learning environments contributing to broader efforts to understand how digital design and pedagogy affect engagement and coordination in STEM classrooms.