Sari Karmina, Hasti Rahmaningtyas, M. Kamarul Kabilan
Collaborative learning has attracted international researchers and educators worldwide since its development in the 1960s. Research on collaborative learning in postgraduate education has been positive and promising. Collaborative learning increases motivation among postgraduate students and boosts learning outcomes. However, researchers from different continents have reported that collaborative learning at the postgraduate level encounters some challenges, such as unequal workload, lack of feedback from the lecturers, group composition, unresolved conflicts, time to meet outside the classroom, and not having sufficient interpersonal skills to communicate in groups. It is, therefore, interesting to explore postgraduate students’ perspectives and experiences on working collaboratively in international contexts. To understand the students’ perspectives and experiences, we were drawn to the work of Urie Bronfenbrenner because his ecological theory provides a framework for understanding the complexity of the current study participants’ perspectives and experiences on their collaborative learning. Using interpretative case study design, we aim to know the participants’ different environments (microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem) that influence their collaborative learning, particularly with Indonesian and Malaysian students who might have similar cultures but have different educational systems. Twelve postgraduate students from Indonesia and Malaysia joined the semi-structured interviews. Based on the findings of the interviews, we developed an ecological model of Indonesian and Malaysian perspectives and experiences of engaging in collaborative learning. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2026.
Department of English, Universitas Negeri Malang, Malang, Indonesia; School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia
