Cooperative Learning: The Key Elements Of Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning, sometimes called small-group learning, is an instructional strategy in which small groups of students work together on a common task (TeacherVision, 2017). According to the Education Consumer Guide, Cooperative learning is successful because students of different levels of ability have the opportunity to use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement.

Collaboration: Learners will work together in groups to reach a goal by putting their talents, expertise and skills to work. It has the ability to share responsibilities, exhibit flexibility and be respectful

Cooperative Learning is a method of teaching and learning in which students work together to explore a significant question or create a meaningful project. In Cooperative Learning, students work together in small groups on a structured activity in order to accomplish shared learning goals. (Abass)

Secondly, the intervention goal is to improve students’ comfortability and motivation to work together to co-create knowledge. To promote group work and collaboration, cooperative learning will be used so students can work together to make sense of new information and solve problems. The first step is to ensure that the students understand and believe that the classroom is a safe and a nonjudgmental environment which will be accomplished by having students at the beginning of the schoolyear introduce themselves, provide their interests, and state what they would like to learn from the class. The teacher will establish pre-assigned, diverse, semester-length, groups for students to complete group work. Once students are acquainted with each other, they will engage in team-building exercises pertinent to a particular American history topic being learned to help develop rapport (e.g., each group member teaches each other something new about the topic). Overall, these steps will create a cooperative learning environment that will initiate motivation and comfortability.

(Woolfolk, 2013) talks about Cooperative learning, which is learning by working and talking to others. This allows participants to engage in discussion, elaborate, question and expand on their knowledge with each other. This can take place within group work, paired work and between teacher and pupil. Vygotsky’s theory suggest that for learning to be successful during social interaction; reasoning, comprehension, critical thinking takes place and then is internalised. Cooperative learning provides the purposes for scaffolding to take place to help advance learning. (Woolfolk,

Cooperative learning will be a method I use in my classroom. I believe that in a cooperative learning group a student can learn socialization skills and how to work with others. This goes along with the pragmatic/progressive philosophy that children learn by doing. The progressivism teaching style also includes the incorporation of problem-solving and critical thinking techniques. I want my students to learn to think for themselves and be able to function in society. At the same time, I will be a fellow learner myself and

Teachers also received training in this area. The groups, then, participated in grade-level appropriate math units. Students were further encouraged to work cooperatively because individual improvement on assessments also earned team points. Data was collected by audio and video recordings. The research team hypothesized that helping behaviors would be related to achievement. Achievement gain would be used as the dependent variable and would be measured by an ANCOVA test. The team found that there was a significant relationship to students using helping behaviors in cooperative learning groups to academic achievement gain. The only behaviors that did not show significant growth were the giving and receiving of answers without explanation (Nattiv, 1994).

The term cooperative learning yields multiple benefits when students are working in teams on an assignment or project under conditions in which certain criteria are satisfied, including that the team members be held individually accountable for the complete content of the assignment or project. (Richard M. Felder1 , and Rebecca

Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. Students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it. Cooperative efforts result in participants striving for mutual benefit so that all group members: * gain from each other's efforts. (Your success benefits me and my success benefits you.) * recognize that all group members share a common fate. (We all

In the growing global society of the 21st century we must prepare our students for a team oriented approach to learning. Cooperative learning allows the development of many different skills in the classroom. As many educators know every student is at different intellectual levels when they enter their classrooms. Cooperative learning allows small groups of students with different abilities to learn from their peers. Through teamwork students learn to appropriately commend others when a task is accomplished. Although, students will be working together for a common goal, each individual student will be responsible for their own work. There are several positive outcomes for students through the use of cooperative learning. In particular, it promotes positive interaction between members of different cultures and socio-economic groups. Additionally, it motivates students to learn new material ensuring student metacognition. To sum up my thoughts about cooperative learning I feel this learning technique offers many benefit’s to students and should be evident in daily learning.

Introducing collaborative learning will help students develop skills in social interaction, classroom engagement, and self-motivation. They need to learn these skills at a young age so they can interact with other children and create relationships with their peers. This is an important standard to teach the student’s because they will carry social interaction skills and self-motivation throughout their whole educational careers and throughout their

Collaborative learning is a great tool for instructors to motivate their student to work with their peers. It is a challenge for teachers to guide their students to work as a team and allocate them into one group. To form a group is an unnatural process, instructors need to rely on the detail of assignment, the nature of the task, students’ personality and their abilities to form a group. If a teacher fails to examine necessary factors before forming a group, it will experience a conflict or unbalance team and directly affect the work performance (Barkley, et al,

When people think of collaborative learning, they think of students being forced to work together in order to complete a task. These all too common groups normally consist of one student that does all the work; while the other members of the group are copying down all of the answers. Everyone loses in this scenario. The teacher loses because they cannot assess student learning. And the students lose because they are not doing the work and learning collectively. This is why many first year teachers shy away from assigning instructional activities that involve collaborative learning. Instead, first year teachers implement strategies that encourages a more traditional mode of teaching called individualistic learning. Individualistic learning happens when the teacher assigns work and each student in the class is responsible for completing their work independently. This an ineffective mode of teaching because it creates an environment of competition. Also, it does not encourage students to learn from each other. Students who are subjected to individualized learning focus more on achieving the right answer than learning. This can cause students to become disengaged, discouraged or feel inadequate if they cannot keep up with their peers. While both cooperative and individualized learning have faults, cooperative learning is more effective because it promotes accountability, motivation, and interpersonal skills

An important skill for students to develop in school is collaboration. During this course, I learned more in-depth knowledge about students working with others within a concept called cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is one of three goal structures associated with motivation. The three structures are cooperative, competitive, and individualistic. Though all three are used to motivate students to achieve goals, I believe cooperative is the most ideal goal structure for student development. Cooperative learning involves putting student in groups for a lesson and requiring all students to succeed in order for any one individual to earn rewards. This strategy enforces individual accountability for each child to complete their share

Collaborative learning is founded on the idea that the learning process is a naturally social act which requires the participants to talk among themselves. Collaborative learning involves small groups of students who act on a structured learning activity to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product. In simpler terms, the students work in groups to learn or understand a new concept they are studying. In this learning approach, it is important to understand that the students are accountable for individual work as well as the group work they do as a group in collaborative learning