  Current investigations into pedagogical goals of introductory algebra-based
physics students at the University of Central Arkansas, by learning orientation
towards an in-class metacognitive group problem solving task, seek to determine
possible relationships with attitudinal shifts and course performance. Students
thus far have been untreated with known group-based learning pedagogies, so as
to establish trends of common group habits, and ultimately to properly inform
implementation of group-based pedagogies in reaction to these trends. However,
students' group dynamics and learning orientations prove difficult to map to
group-based measurements; an estimate of group learning orientation and
preferred working group dynamic is here explored as a potential means of
interpreting students' use of problem solving strategies. A means of "sampling"
audiovisual data in a live classroom of several simultaneous groups is also
presented as a way to estimate the frequency of chosen strategies to this end.
