Project-based approaches to learning is becoming increasingly common in higher education (Nerland & Prøitz, 2018).The assumption is that student-centric, collaborative learning activities provide students with both academic, professional skills and social skills, such as learning to work in and as a team. It is also argued that pedagogical approaches whereby students work on projects with real-world problems provide authentic educational experiences that can bridge the gap between education and work life. Empirical research has shown that project-based learning has a positive effect on student achievement (Chen & Yang, 2019), and also on students’ motivation, experience of relevance, and creativity (Damşa, 2018). The large part of this research, including systematic reviews and meta-analysis, has been conducted in K-12 education (Chen & Yang, 2019), but in recent years it has been rapidly increasing also within higher education. 

A claim that is often made is that there is a lack of process-oriented studies on student collaboration in higher education. It is argued that the literature is dominated by ‘effect-oriented’ research that focuses on the benefits of pedagogical approaches on a range of individual variables, such as academic achievement, student satisfaction or skill development (e.g. Janssen et al., 2010; Sjølie et al., 2021). The problem with this line of research is that it employs a ‘black box’ approach with which it is difficult to understand and explain the variability in the research findings (Janssen et al., 2010). Consequently, we seem to know little about why some student teams function well and foster the learning process, and how factors, such as diversity or complexity of the problem to be solved influence the process, project outcome and student learning.

This claim is, however, not sufficiently substantiated. The research literature on student teams or group work in higher education makes up a diverse, fragmented, complex body of research that is inherently heterogenic and multidisciplinary. Research is often contained within specific educational programs (e.g. teacher education, engineering, or health education), with limited references across the educational settings and with discipline specific terms. The different educational settings often focus on various pedagogical methods, using different terms for the same approach or the same terms in different ways. So far, there exist no reviews on student project collaboration that take into account the diversity in research in higher education. Reviews have either been conducted within a specific discipline (e.g. Matturro et al., 2019; Pow-Sang et al., 2017) or for a specific method (e.g. Guo et al., 2020; Knutas & J., 2015; Reimschisel et al., 2017). In Guo et al.’s (2020) review, for example, the authors include only studies that use the term “project-based learning” in the title. This excludes many studies that use other terms for project-based approaches (or not use it at all in the title).

This paper presents the result of a large systematic mapping study on the empirical research that has been conducted on students’ project collaboration in higher education. The study used a wide search to include the diversity of terms, methods and approaches used across higher education. The research question is: What characterizes the empirical process-oriented research that has been undertaken on students' project collaboration in higher education? The map can be used to identify research gaps and suggest a research agenda for project-based approaches to learning in higher education. The map also provides an opportunity to identify patterns and thus investigate how the different educational contexts might influence the way we research and conceptualize project collaboration in different disciplines.

Systematic mapping studies are designed to give an overview of a research area (Petersen et al., 2015). Compared to a systematic literature review, a systematic mapping study focus on the characteristics of the research rather than the results or the quality of the research. In this study, four researchers in education and three research librarians planned and conducted the mapping review following the guidelines outlined by Petersen et al (2008). A modified version of the PICO – PICo - (Population, Interest of phenomena, Context) was developed to identify keywords and formulate search strings from the research questions. The search string was constructed through brainstorming synonyms for the central words in PICo, searching the potential databases for keywords, initial scoping and reading other reviews, contacting people from different education programs to make sure the different terms were covered and testing different versions of the search string in the databases. Several editions were made before the final search string was executed in four databases (ERIC, Education Source, Web of science, Scopus) on January 16 2021. An updated search was executed on January 20 2023. The search included literature published from year 2000 onwards. Results from the search were exported to EndNote for removal of duplicates before all papers (n=24055) were uploaded in Rayyan for abstract screening. The updated search with additional n=6847 is currently being screened in Rayyan. Only peer-reviewed empirical studies were included. For the focus of the study we had two inclusion criteria. The first was limited to studies that particularly state a learning setting where students work in groups on a specific project. A project in this review means groups that perform a defined, specialized task within a definite time period and with some kind of product as an outcome. The criterion to focus on project work excluded for example traditional laboratory work, peer-review, students having professional practice in pairs or groups, and several studies on collaborative learning outside project settings. The criterion also excluded general surveys of attitudes about teamwork and experimental studies comparing individual and team performance. Secondly, only studies with some kind of process focus were included. That means that so-called effect (or “blackbox”) studies that only measure the effect of one or more teaching method or learning setting were excluded. Finally, for the included papers (n=887 from the main search), full text was extracted and imported to NVivo for data extraction and mapping process (Petersen et al., 2008).

In the presentation, we provide a detailed description of the method of conducting a systematic mapping review that takes into account the diversity and complexity of research across the different educational settings in higher education. We present the map according to the categories used in the data extraction and mapping process: 1. Context: In what countries, student population and educational disciplines has the process of student project collaboration been investigated? To what extent has research been conducted across educational disciplines? 2. Topics: What aspects of collaboration have been examined? 3. Methods: What research methods have been used? An analysis across these three categories will also be provided, exploring whether there are patterns within and across educational disciplines. As a research area matures there is often a large increase in the amount of research that is produced, which is illustrated in this study by the high number of hits (6847) in the updated search that covered the years of 2022 and 2023. This mapping review structures the research area of process-oriented research on student project collaboration in higher education and maps the diversity of educational research on that topic. It thus allows us to know what topics have been covered and identifies research gaps to suggest a research agenda. Finally, we elaborate on the limitations and challenges doing a systematic mapping review in higher education, relating to the high number of initial hits, the diversity in the conceptualization of terms and operating with the “fuzzy” inclusion criteria of student project collaboration and process-oriented studies. As such it makes an important methodological contribution to conducting reviews that takes into account the conceptual, contextual and methodological diversity. So far, systematic mapping has been frequently used in medical research and software engineering (Petersen et al., 2015), but only to a limited extent in education.

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