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Competition in higher education – good or bad?

Kristensen, Fredrik LU ; Troeng, Olof ; Safavi, Mohammadhassan LU and Narayanan, Prakash LU (2015)
Abstract
Competition is an integrated part of most civilizations, from sports to education. Often competition arise whether or not it was intended and higher education is no exception from this. Should teachers acknowledge this and try to introduce competition as a part of the course or should they try to prevent competition, even spontaneously arisen competition? In this paper an overview of effects of competition reported in literature is presented together with deeper analyzes of how grading affect competition among students, projectbased competition and competition within a class. As always, no one answer is found, competition can be good or bad, but a general trend seems to be that when competition is combined with cooperation good results... (More)
Competition is an integrated part of most civilizations, from sports to education. Often competition arise whether or not it was intended and higher education is no exception from this. Should teachers acknowledge this and try to introduce competition as a part of the course or should they try to prevent competition, even spontaneously arisen competition? In this paper an overview of effects of competition reported in literature is presented together with deeper analyzes of how grading affect competition among students, projectbased competition and competition within a class. As always, no one answer is found, competition can be good or bad, but a general trend seems to be that when competition is combined with cooperation good results have been reported. Furthermore, the competitive part of the course should not be the sole factor for grading but rather seen as a complement to regular teaching. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Book/Report
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Higher learning, Competition, Cooperation, Project, LTH, Grades
categories
Higher Education
Popular Science
pages
16 pages
publisher
Lund University
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
0196cdb4-128c-4f46-9668-f26dfb76b54b (old id 8519693)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 11:02:34
date last changed
2018-11-21 21:02:18
@techreport{0196cdb4-128c-4f46-9668-f26dfb76b54b,
  abstract     = {{Competition is an integrated part of most civilizations, from sports to education. Often competition arise whether or not it was intended and higher education is no exception from this. Should teachers acknowledge this and try to introduce competition as a part of the course or should they try to prevent competition, even spontaneously arisen competition? In this paper an overview of effects of competition reported in literature is presented together with deeper analyzes of how grading affect competition among students, projectbased competition and competition within a class. As always, no one answer is found, competition can be good or bad, but a general trend seems to be that when competition is combined with cooperation good results have been reported. Furthermore, the competitive part of the course should not be the sole factor for grading but rather seen as a complement to regular teaching.}},
  author       = {{Kristensen, Fredrik and Troeng, Olof and Safavi, Mohammadhassan and Narayanan, Prakash}},
  institution  = {{Lund University}},
  keywords     = {{Higher learning; Competition; Cooperation; Project; LTH; Grades}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  title        = {{Competition in higher education – good or bad?}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/5680982/8519800.pdf}},
  year         = {{2015}},
}