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Classroom Strategies: COOPERATIVE LEARNING

The relevancy and effectiveness of cooperative learning

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  • Promotes positive interdependence. It creates a learning environment where students feel responsible for and dependent upon their group mates, which enhances their understanding of what it means to work on a team.

 

  • Increases individual accountability. Through guidelines set by the instructor, learners will understand why their voice contributes to the learning of the entire group. It is their participation that is monitored by the instructor, rather than the ideas they bring forward.​

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  • Promotes social interaction and the development of social skills in that students are learning not just the subject matter, but how to communicate and work together. 

 

  • Increases learner self-confidence, awareness of diversity among students, and critical thinking skills.

According to Johnson and Johnson (n.d.), cooperative learning is a teaching tool defined as “students working together to accomplish shared goals”  According to Wldokowski and Ginsberg (2017), adults are motivated when they are included. Cooperative learning values the individual contribution of the adult learner to the learning of the group at-large, which is one reason why it is effective. Weidman and Bishop (2009) acknowledge several other elements of cooperative learning that make it an effective teaching tool, including that it:

Team Building

How to help your students learn cooperatively:

2) IMPLEMENT YOUR PLAN

3) EVALUATE

Ways to incorporate cooperative learning into the classroom

Using cooperative learning is extremely valuable for classes of two or more individuals. Read more to learn how to prepare a cooperative learning activity with your learners, and then about various cooperative learning activities that are tried and true.

  • When you are getting ready to set up cooperative learning activities, consider three key steps (Palmer et al, n.d): 

 

  1. Create a Plan - this step includes considering what the intent or learning outcome of the activity will be, determining how big groups will be, assigning students to groups and identifying the task the group is expected to complete.

  2. Implement the Plan - During this stage, you’ll want to monitor the group to make sure learners are participating. Consider asking guiding questions as needed, as well as making yourself available to answer questions.

  3. Evaluate - Providing closure is an important step of collaborative learning in that it allows the instructor to evaluate the students’ learning. Summarizing main points for learners to take away creates an opportunity for them to reflect upon how the learning activity contributed to a greater understanding.

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  • Examples of Cooperative Learning Activities include (KNILT, 2016) :​

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  • Think-Pair-Share: Ask your class a question pertaining to the learning outcome. Provide a minute or two for the learners to consider the question, and then have them team up with another to talk about their responses. Afterwards, the pairs will share their thoughts with the entire class.

  • ​Jigsaw:​ In this activity, you will divide your class into several separate teams. Each team is responsible for learning about one core part of a general topic. After the team has had a chance to research their part of the topic, they will present their conclusions to the rest of the class. Remember, it will be important to provide a summary of points learned throughout the presentations, so learners will know which key points to take away.

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  • Round Robin: Teams are given specific questions or problems to solve. Learners should be provided a specific amount of time to agree upon an answer or solution, after which, they will present their conclusions to the class or back to the teacher

Additional resources

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  • Sources:

    • Palmer, G., Peters, R., & Streetman, R. (n.d.). Cooperative Learning. In P. Lombardi (Ed.) Instructional methods, strategies and technologies to meet the needs of all learners. Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

    • Wlodkowski, R. J., & Ginsberg, M. B. (2017). Enhancing adult motivation to learn: A comprehensive guide for teaching all adults (4th ed.). Jossey Bass.

    • Weidman, R., & Bishop, M. (2009). Using the jigsaw model to facilitate cooperative learning in an online course. Quarterly Review of  Distance Education, 10(1), 51–64.

Cooperative Learning Model: Strategies & Examples

Cooperative Learning Model: Strategies & Examples

Play Video
"Cooperative Learning Model: Strategies and Examples"
This video provides a great, quick, overview of cooperative learning. Although it demonstrates with images of children, all of the strategies discussed are relevant to adult learning.

1) CREATE A PLAN

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