Cooperative Learning

 

Can you guess from the name what Cooperative Learning is about? 

In this approach, also named as Collaborative Learning, students work on a task in groups and often are rewarded either partially or completely for the success of the group as a whole. Aspects of cooperative learning have been part of education for a long time; some form of cooperation has always been necessary to participate on teams. he more active a lesson, the more students tend to engage intellectually and emotionally in the learning activities. 

The use of cooperative learning groups in instruction is based on the principle of constructivism, with particular attention to the contribution that social interaction can make.  

In essence, constructivism rests on the idea that individuals learn through building their own knowledge, connecting new ideas and experiences to existing knowledge and experiences to form new or enhanced understanding. The core element of cooperative learning is to showcase the positive effects of interdependence while underlining the importance of personal responsibility. This happens naturally in cooperative learning since students work with one another, but they all have a different task to accomplish or concept to explain. As a bonus, your students are being social while they’re working in cooperative learning.

The key to cooperative learning is keeping students on task. As the teacher, this is where you fit into the cooperative learning experience. You’re not directly “teaching” when cooperative learning occurs. Instead, you’re ensuring groups of students stay on task.

During early days of the semester, it may make the most sense to transition into a standard lecture that introduces a topic to students. But lectures are old-school, and they don’t always hold the attention of today’s always-connected generation. That’s when you can jump to a cooperative learning activity. Students have heard the conceptual details of what they’re learning, and now they can apply those to a group activity. That activity could be a discussion, project, exercise, or almost anything else. As long as your students are working together toward a goal, you’re on the right track! To wrap things up, have student groups present their end results to one another. This is a great way to spur a class-wide discussion, allowing other groups to hear ideas that they may have never considered. It’s also an excellent way to start an academic debate, in the event groups disagree with one another. Students get to hear both sides of an opinion, which is always good and it prevents them from characterizing or generalizing people who think differently from them.

Cooperative Learning Structures and Techniques

-Three-step Interview

-Roundtable

-Focused Listing

-Structured Problem-solving

-One Minute Papers

-Paired Annotations

-Structured Learning Team Group Roles

-Send-A-Problem

-Value Line

-Uncommon Commonalities

-Team Expectations

-Double Entry Journal

-Guided Reciprocal Peer Questioning

Group hate exists in almost all student groups.  Whether it be because of past bad experiences, concerns about how the project will play out, worries about group members loafing, or not knowing how to effectively manage conflict that may arise within the group.  However, group based learning is an important aspect of higher education and should continue to be used. More and more companies are turning towards team based models in order to become more efficient in the work place. And there have also been many studies claiming cooperative learning is more effective than competitive learning and individualistic efforts.

The best time to begin using CL in the classroom is at the start of a new term or school year. This way, the students will not be exposed to individual work and then have to “switch gears” and learn to work in a group in the middle of the year. Our students need to be engaged in learning in a variety of ways, but collaborative learning has been identified as a necessary skill for success in the 21st century and also an essential component of deep learning.