Cooperative Learning

1. Cooperative Learning What is it?

2. Classroom Structures • Win-lose struggle…competition among peers • Work independently of peers…individualism • Work cooperatively in small groups…cooperation

3. Cooperative Learning • Working together to accomplish shared goals • Outcomes beneficial to themselves and group members • “Cooperative Learning is the instructional use of small groups that allows students to work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning.” (ACSD website)

4. Five Essential Components • 1. Positive Interdependence • Linked together, all for one, one for all attitude. • I cannot succeed unless you succeed • Together we stand, divided we fall. • Watchword of the American Revolution

5. Components cont. • 2. Promotive Interaction • Students promote other’s success by helping, assisting, supporting encouraging, and praising each other’s efforts to learn. • Oral explanation of problems, discussing concepts, teaching to each other, connecting present and past learning

6. Components cont. • 3. Individual Accountability • Learn together to perform better as an individual • Ensures that group members know who needs more assistance, support and encouragement in completing tasks.

7. Components cont. • 4. Interpersonal and small group skills • Taskworkacademic work…and small group skills teamwork. • More complex then competitive or individualistic learning • Leadership, decision making, trust-building, communication, and conflict management must be taught as well as academic learning

8. Components cont. • 5. Group Processing • Group members discuss how well their achieving goals and maintaining effective working relationships. • What’s helpful or hurtful in group setting.

9. Teaching Cooperative Skills • “How to manage conflicts?” • Cooperation and conflict go hand in hand…? • Group members that care about group goals, and care about each other will encounter conflicts. • Conflicts handled correctly can add fun, creativity, higher-level reasoning. Flip side is anger, frustration, and hostility

10. Cooperative Skills Controversy • Peer mediation • All students are taught how to negotiate solutions to their conflict • Academic controversy • Students challenge each other’s intellectual reasoning with their own…argue the different sides.

11. Gaining Experience using Cooperative Learning • Knowledge about how to do something is not a skill…Being able to do something well is a skill. • Time and effort to develop • “Nothing new that is really interesting comes without collaboration” James Watson Nobel Prize winner • Aristotle “For things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”