Cooperative Learning

What is cooperative learning? What role does it have in teaching and what are some examples of it? All of these questions will be answered in today’s blog.

As we learned from our last lecture cooperative learning is an instructional strategy encouraged in many learning institutions, where students are often asked to make groups and work together on a standard task, as it requires participation and cooperation. Despite the various learning strategies adopted in schools, cooperative learning has been identified as the most effective of all. This strategy of instruction and learning has been adequately adopted in many academic institutions also as corporate institutions for educating people. To be cooperative, to reach the full potential of the group, five essential elements need to be carefully structured into the situation: positive interdependence, individual and group accountability, promotive interaction, appropriate use of social skills, and group processing.

For students who learn a second language, it might be ideal for us as future English teachers to use cooperative learning strategy as this way of learning is clearer to them. A number of cooperative learning models include; the Graffiti model, the jigsaw model, the tutorial controversy model and obviously the student teams-achievement division model. If you’re tired of using the same cooperative learning strategies over and over again you can try some of these fresh, meaningful group learning strategies.

1. Students are given four choices. 2. Students record their answers. 3. The teacher designates one corner for each choice. 4. Students travel to the appropriate corner. 5. Students pair up and discuss answers. Here are some examples:

• Just for Fun: What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?

• Science: Provide students with four animals. They choose which one to represent then give 2 to 3 examples of the animal that they chose.

• Math: Provide students with four angles: Straight, obtuse, acute, or right. They think of a real world object that includes the angle.

• Language Arts: Students decide what season of the year they think is the best. Then support their opinion with details.

• Reading: Decide on four genres you want students to focus on. After students pick their genre, they are to write the title of 2-3 examples they think fit the genre. Discuss in corner.

• Social Studies: Give the name of four Native American Indian tribes. Students share what they wore, used as weapons, lived in, etc.

Cooperative learning also involves assigning roles to every student during a group or team. For college students to perform well, or participate, it's advisable to rotate roles by activity. For instance, one of them could be the roundtable. It involves a teacher presenting a category of words. The words may begin with the letter “f”, and thus the instructor will ask students to write down one word at each time in turns.

Technology features a vast number of roles to play within the education sector as I have mentioned in the previous blog. Therefore, most learning institutions and the government have advocated for the faculties to integrate technology into their lessons, for example online games like Portal 2 which is employed to demonstrate physics concept or Assassin’s Creed series which is operated to research the historical facts and separate them from fiction. Emphasis has been put to make sure that online games are utilized in education. Teachers find it challenging to use online games in implementing and delivering students’ activities because they see it mostly as distracting. But us as teachers “in progress” can avoid that by creating our own games which we see fit for the classroom and of course plan ahead and try to use it and learn about it, not only for online games but other technologies. By doing so the we would be ready to minimize the cases of user error and students would be advised on the correct way to use the new tool during lessons.

After selecting the technology (let’s take online games since I discussed it the most), it's necessary to develop a cooperative environment, after all that’s what this whole post is about. Cooperative learning moves around mutual dependency between the individuals involved. Therefore, the members of the group will all work together to attain equivalent learning objectives. Online games in education are crucial since it motivates students to participate in learning activities and to work better as a group.

In summation, it's been evidently obvious that cooperative learning is one among the foremost effective learning strategies. This type of learning ensures smooth integration of student’s knowledge within the classroom as students gain tons of experience and knowledge on social, cognitive and academic skills.

The concept of group work is embraced in cooperative learning where students are ready to solve problems together. The various cooperative learning models have demonstrated a high sense of similarities in terms of collaborative learning. On the contrary, the mode of execution of every model is different thus making each model to unique.