LESSON 5

CO-OPERATIVE LEARNING
(FOR INTERNAL CIRCULATION ONLY)
SOURCE:
https://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperative/whatis.html
 OVERVIEW
• This lesson focuses on approaches to learning, It presents basic
information of Cooperative Learning and its relation to how the
students learn. The concept and key features of Cooperative Learning
and its implications on teaching and learning in the classroom will be
explored.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of the lesson, students are able to:
1. Define Cooperative Learning,
2. Explain the Types of Cooperative Learning,
3. Explain the Five elements of Cooperative Learning,
4. Explain how groups are formed in Cooperative Learning,
5.Design cooperative learning in the classroom, and
6. Explain the roles of teachers and students in
cooperative learning.
•.
 TOPICS COVERED
• Defining Cooperative Learning,
• Types of Cooperative Learning,
• Five elements of Cooperative Learning,
• Grouping in Cooperative Learning,
• Designing and implementing cooperative learning, and
• Roles of Teachers and students in cooperative learning.
What is Cooperative Learning?

• Cooperative Learning involves structuring classes around small

groups that work together in such a way that each group
member's success is dependent on the group's success.
• Cooperation involves much more than being physically near
other students, discussing material, helping, or sharing material
with other students.
• It requires teachers to structure cooperative interdependence
among the students.
• These structures involve five key elements which can
be implemented in a variety of ways. There are also different
types of cooperative groups appropriate for different situations.
FIVE ELEMENTS OF
COOPERATIVE LEARNING
• Positive Interdependence
• Individual Accountability
• Face-to-Face (Promotive) Interaction
• Interpersonal and Small Group Social Skills
• Group Processing:
Positive Interdependence:
• You'll know when you've succeeded in structuring
positive interdependence when students perceive that
they "sink or swim together."
• This can be achieved through mutual goals, division of
labor, dividing materials, roles, and by making part of
each student's grade dependent on the performance of
the rest of the group.
• Group members must believe that each person's efforts
benefit not only him- or herself, but all group members
as well.
Individual Accountability
• The essence of individual accountability in cooperative
learning is "students learn together, but perform alone.“
• This ensures that no one can "hitch-hike" on the work of
others.
• A lesson's goals must be clear enough that students
are able to measure whether (a) the group is successful
in achieving them, and (b) individual members are
successful in achieving them as well.
Face-to-Face (Promotive)
Interaction
• Important cognitive activities and interpersonal
dynamics only occur when students promote each
other's learning.
• This includes oral explanations of how to solve
problems, discussing the nature of the concepts being
learned, and connecting present learning with past
knowledge.
• It is through face-to-face, promotive interaction that
members become personally committed to each other
as well as to their mutual goals.
Interpersonal and Small Group
Social Skills
• In cooperative learning groups, students learn
academic subject matter (taskwork) and also
interpersonal and small group skills (teamwork).
• A group must know how to provide effective leadership,
decision-making, trust-building, communication, and
conflict management.
• As students develop these skills, later group projects
will probably run more smoothly and efficiently than
early ones.
Group Processing:
• After completing their task, students must be given time
and procedures for analyzing how well their learning
groups are functioning and how well social skills are
being employed.
• Group processing involves both taskwork and
teamwork, with an eye to improving it on the next
project.
WHY DOES COOPERATIVE LEARNING WORK?

• Related Links
An extensive body of research emphasizes two forms of
interaction most important for enhancing student
academic development, personal development and
satisfaction:
• student - student interactions
• student - faculty interactions
WHY DOES COOPERATIVE LEARNING WORK?

Cooperative learning exercises enhance important skills

including (Barkley, Cross and Major, 2005):
• using the language of the discipline
• explaining, providing feedback, understanding
alternative perspectives
• discovering patterns and relationships
• organizing and synthesizing information
• developing strategies and analysis
TYPES OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING GROUPS

There are three commonly recognized types of

cooperative learning groups. Each type of group has its
own purpose and application.
Informal Cooperative Learning Groups
Informal Cooperative Learning Groups

• These ad-hoc groups may be organized "on-the-fly" as

an aid in direct teaching.
• Informal groups are particularly useful in breaking up a
lecture into shorter segments interspersed with group
activity.
• While this method leads to less time for lecture, it will
increase the amount of material retained by students as
well as their comfort working with each other. (Johnson,
et al., 2006, p.3:10)
Formal Cooperative Learning Groups

• This type of group forms the basis for most routine uses
of cooperative learning.
• Groups are assembled for at least one class period and
may stay together for several weeks working on
extended projects.
• These groups are where students learn and become
comfortable applying the different techniques of
working together cooperatively. (Johnson, et al., 2006,
p.2:2)
Cooperative Base Groups

• Cooperative base groups are long-term, stable groups that last for
at least a year made up of individuals with different aptitudes and
perspectives.
• They provide a context in which students can support each other in
academics as well as in other aspects of their lives.
• The group members make sure everyone is completing their work
and hold each other accountable for their contributions.
• Implementing cooperative base groups in such a way that students
meet regularly for the duration of a course completing cooperative
learning tasks can provide the permanent support and caring that
students need "to make academic progress and develop cognitively
and socially in healthy ways." (Johnson et al., 1998 , p.10:7)
HOW TO USE COOPERATIVE LEARNING?

• Cooperative learning exercises can be as simple as a

five minute in class exercise or as complex as a project
which crosses class periods.
• These can be described more generally in terms of low,
medium, and high faculty/student time investment.
• Low (simple, informal, less than 15 minutes, in-class)
• Medium (one to two meeting sessions, more formal, in
or out of class)
High (complex, formal, across multiple class periods, in
and out of class)
HOW TO USE COOPERATIVE LEARNING?

Cooperative learning can be used across a wide range

of classroom settings ranging from small to large
lecture, as well as in online classes.
• Recitation and laboratory sections
• Small enrollment classes
• Large enrollment classes (by using personal response
devices, Smith et al, 2009)
• Online classes (Roberts, 2004)
DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING
COOPERATIVE LEARNING

No matter what the setting is, it properly involves five

key steps.
Pre-Instructional Planning
Introduce the Activity to the Students
Introduce the Activity to the Students
Assessment
Process
DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING
COOPERATIVE LEARNING
1.Pre-Instructional Planning
Prior planning helps to establish the specific cooperative learning technique to be used
and lays the foundation for effective group work. Plan out how groups will be formed and
structure how the members will interact with each other.

2.Introduce the Activity to the Students

Students need to get their "marching orders." Explain the academic task to them and what
the criteria are for success. Then structure the cooperative aspects of their work with
special attention to the components of positive interdependence and individual
accountability. Set up time limits and allow for clarifying questions.

3. Monitor and Intervene

This is where you let the groups run while you circulate through the room to collect
observation data, see whether they understand the assignment, give immediate feedback
and praise for working together. If a group is having problems, you can intervene to help
them get on the right track.
DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING
COOPERATIVE LEARNING
4. Assessment
Some informal assessment is already done while you are monitoring
the groups during the exercise. However, once the group finishes
their project, work should be assessed by both instructor and group.

5. Process
Group processing involves asking the groups to rate their own
performance and set goals for themselves to improve their
cooperative work.
TEACHER’S ROLES IN COOPERATIVE
LEARNING
The teacher's task during cooperative learning involves the
stimulation of constructive interactions between learners.
In order to achieve this, it is essential for the teacher to organize
student interactions in the context of academic tasks and
simultaneously, prepare the learners for collaborative work with others.
The teacher's role is crucial in order to scaffold the students'
participation in the classroom in order to improve their learning and it
is teachers' pedagogical practices that help to develop
these collaborative work habits.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004279.2016.1189946?
journalCode=rett20
STUDENT ROLES IN COOPERATIVE LEARNING

• Assigning roles to students is one way to encourage

positive interdependence, interaction, and group
processing, which are among the five key elements of
working in groups. Usually roles are responsibilities on
top of the project itself.
• Choose roles that will help students overcome
communication difficulties to get the project done and
done well.
Potential Project Roles

• Leader/Editor: This student is in charge of organizing the final product of the

project, be it a paper, a presentation, etc. That doesn't mean technical details,
but of making sure that the project meets the standards set out by the
instructor (often as a rubric), plus any extras stipulated by the group. These
standards generally include punctuality and completeness.
• Recorder/Secretary: This person takes notes whenever the group meets and
keeps track of group data/sources/etc. This person distributes these notes to
the rest of the group highlighting sections relevant for their parts of the
project.
• Checker: Someone needs to double-check data, bibliographic sources, or
graphics for accuracy and correctness.
• Spokesperson/Press Secretary/Webmaster: This person would be
responsible for the technical details of the final product and would be ready to
summarize the group's progress and findings to the instructor and to other
groups.
Possible Discussion Roles

• Facilitator/Encourager: This student gets discussion moving and keeps it

moving, often by asking the other group members questions, sometimes
about what they've just been saying.
• Timekeeper: Someone needs to make sure that the group stays on track
and gets through a reasonable amount of material in the given time
period.
• Summarizer: Every so often (perhaps once per question for a list of
questions, or at the end for one question), this student provides a
summary of the discussion for other students to approve or amend.
• Reflector: This student will listen to what others say and explain it back in
his or her own words, asking the original speaker if the interpretation is
correct.
• Elaborator: This person seeks connections between the current discussion
and past topics or overall course themes.
Group Size

• GrHow involved is the project? How many students are

needed to do the job? Ideally, that's how many students you
want to group. For short or simple tasks, often a pair is
sufficient. Groups for a big project or base groups for an
entire course will usually be larger.
• Smaller groups are more effective and easier to work with
than large ones, as students are less likely to be able to
duck their share of work. Research suggests that groups of 3
or 5 are ideal for base groups and formal cooperative
groups. Informal groups are best with 2-4 students. (Read
descriptions of different types of cooperative learning
groups.)
COOPERATIVE LEARNING
TECHNIQUES
• Cooperative learning techniques can be loosely categorized
by the skill that each enhances (Barkley, Cross and Major,
2005), although it is important to recognize that many
cooperative learning exercises can be developed to fit
within multiple categories.
• Categories include discussion, reciprocal teaching, graphic
organizers, writing and problem solving.
• Each category includes a number of potential structures to
guide the development of a cooperative learning exercise.
Discussion: Communicating
"A good give-and-take discussion can produce unmatched learning experiences as students articulate
their ideas, respond to their classmates' points, and develop skills in evaluating the evidence of their
own and others' positions." (Davis, 1993, p. 63)
Think-pair-share:
As probably the best know cooperative learning exercise, the think-pair-share structure provides
students with the opportunity to reflect on the question posed and then practice sharing and receiving
potential solutions. Its simplicity provides instructors with an easy entry into cooperative learning and it
is readily adaptable to a wide range of course constructs.
(Example: Where Do I Begin? Using Think-Pair-Share to Initiate the Problem- Solving Process)
Three-step interview:
This structure can be used both as an ice-breaker which introduces students to one another and to
provide students with a venue for soliciting opinions, positions, or ideas from their peers. Students are
first paired and take turns interviewing each other using a series of questions provided by the instructor.
Pairs then match up and students introduce their original partner. At the end of the exercise, all four
students have had their position or viewpoints on an issue heard, digested, and described by their
peers.
Reciprocal Teaching
Reciprocal teaching: explaining, providing feedback, understanding alternative
perspectives
Slavin (1996), in a review of hundreds of studies, concluded that "students who give each
other elaborated explanations (and less consistently, those who receive such explanations)
are the students who learn most in cooperative learning." (p. 53)
Note-taking pairs:
Poor note-taking leads to poor performance. Designing an exercise which requires students
to summarize their understanding of a concept based on notes taken (with directed
questions such as what is the definition of a concept, how is it used, what are the three most
important characteristics of a topic) and receiving reflective feedback from their partner
provides students the opportunity to find critical gaps in their written records.
Jigsaw
For more complex problems, this structure provides students the opportunity to develop
expertise in one of many components of a problem by first participating in a group solely
focused on a single component. In the second stage of the exercise, groups are reformed
with a representative from each expert group who together now have sufficient expertise to
tackle the whole problem.
Graphic Organizers
• Graphic organizers: discovering patterns and relationships "Graphic
organizers are powerful tools for converting complex information in to
meaningful displays...They can provide a framework for gathering and
sorting ideas for discussion, writing, and research." (Barkley, Cross and
Major, 2005, p.205)
• .Group grid: Students\ practice organizing and classifying information in
a table. A more complex version of this structure requires students to
first identify the classification scheme that will be used.
• Sequence chains: The goal of this exercise is to provide a visual
representation of a series of events, actions, roles, or decisions. Students
can be provided with the items to be organized or asked to first generate
these based on a predetermined end goal. This structure can be made
more complex by having students also identify and describe the links
between each of the sequenced components.
Problem Solving
Problem solving: developing strategies and analysis
Research by mathematics educators Vidakovic (1997) and Vidakovic and Martin (2004)
shows that groups are able to solve problems more accurately than individuals working
alone.
Send-a-problem:
Students participate in a series of problem solving rounds, contributing their independently
generated solution to those that have been developed by other groups. After a number of
rounds, students are asked to review the solutions developed by their peers, evaluate the
answers and develop a final solution. (Example: Understanding the Impact of (Fiscal and
Monetary) Policy)
Three-stay, one-stray:
Even students working in groups can benefit from the feedback of additional peers. In this
structure, students periodically take a break from their work (often at key decision making
points) and send one group member to another group to describe their progress. The role of
the group is to gain information and alternative perspectives by listening and sharing. The
number of times the group sends a representative to another group depends on the level of
complexity of the problem. This method can also be used to report out final solutions.
REFLECTION ON COOPERATIVE
LEARNING
1. What have you learned about cooperative learning?
2. What questions do you have about cooperative learning?
3. What changes might you make in your practice related to
cooperative learning?
4. What support might you need to make these changes?
 THANK YOU

Source
“What is Cooperative Learning?”.
https://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperativ
e/whatis.html