  Collaboration among students is fundamental for knowledge building and
competency development. Yet, the effectiveness of student collaboration depends
on the extent that these interactions occur under conditions that favor
commitment, trust, and decision-making among those who interact. The sanitary
situation and the transition to emergency remote teaching have added new
challenges for collaboration, mainly because now, Information and Communication
Technologies mediate students' interactions. This study first explores the
effectiveness of different collaborative relationships on physics from a sample
of secondary students from two schools located in rural and urban areas in
southern Chile. We used Social Network Analysis to map students' academic
prestige, collaboration, and friendship ties. We define a strong association if
two students are declared mutually as friends. Using multiple linear regression
models, we found positive effects of collaboration on grades, particularly
among students working with friends (strong ties). Then, the second study
corresponds to a quasi-experiment on four classes at the analyzed urban school
during the following academic year. Here, students attended hybrid sessions to
test whether the effects of collaboration found on the first study were stable
throughout two semesters. Following the same procedures as in the exploratory
phase, we found that the initial effects of collaboration on grades are
negative for all collaborative variables, while strong working ties afford
academic gains later into the year. These results contribute to the literature
of collaboration in physics education and its effectiveness, taking into
account social relationships and the needed time for developing beneficial
collective processes among students in the classroom.
