“An effective cooperative group is not a collection of kids thrown together for a brief activity. It's a team composed of diverse students who care about helping one another learn—and about the success of the team itself.”

“It's best if teams are composed of a cross section of the class: high and low achievers, boys and girls, students of different ethnicities.”

“Teachers we work with in Success for All programs, for example, make frequent use of a technique called "random reporter." Each student is given a number from 1 to 5. When teachers ask a question, they direct it to a team and then pick a number at random. The student on that team with that number has to respond for the whole group—and the team can earn points based on the answer.”

“The best way to use cooperative learning is to replace individual work, which in traditional lesson cycles happens after lessons and before assessments.”

 Summary 

It was found that students retain more information when it was learned in a cooperative learning group. In order to have successful cooperative learning groups, 5 elements must be met: positive interdependence, promotive interaction, individual accountability, teaching of interpersonal and social skills, and quality of group processing. Positive interdependence is the idea that students must work together to make sure that each member of the group is successful. Promotive interaction is when students are encouraging each other to learn the material. All cooperative groups must have individual accountability to avoid one or two members doing the work and therefore learning while the others do not. Along with accountability, it is important for students to have the social skills necessary for communicating with their peers appropriately. Finally, group processing is essentially, making sure that all members of the group stay on track and make improvements for the future. It is also important to note that learning style does not appear to be based on culture as much as how it is presented.

Meaningful Quotes:

“Cooperative learning consists of five basic elements: positive interdependence, promotive interaction, individual accountability, teaching of interpersonal and social skills, and quality of group processing.”

“Cooperative learning stimulated cognitive activities, promoted higher levels of achievement and knowledge retention.”

“Although all students in the treatment group were accustomed to a teacher-centered style of instruction, they could adapt to this new cooperative style of learning in 8 weeks of instruction in an Asian learning context.”

“Consequently it appears that learning styles are not culturally-based but contextual”

This article mentions that when individuals hear they will be working in groups, many of them are less than thrilled. The negative aspect of group collaboration are mainly members being too overbearing, member being too passive, and the time constraint. However, it is up to the instructor to try to alleviate these disadvantages. It is also important for the teacher to avoid breaking up a group that doesn’t seem to be making progress. Adjustments must be made within the group for them to work through the issues. Keeping group sizes small will help to keep all members productive. 

Meaningful Quotes:
“Active learning has become an important focus in this time of pedagogical change.”

“Many people cringe and groan when told that they will need to work in a group.  This phenomenon is called ‘grouphate.’”

“There are four stages of group work.   First, the instructor must decide that he/she wants to incorporate group work into the class.  The group work should be designed into the syllabus.  The second stage involves teaching the students to work in a group.  Instructors cannot assume that students know how to work together, structure time, and delegate tasks.  The instructor must be able to teach the students how to work proactively in groups.  This leads to the third stage, which involves monitoring the groups.  The last stage, and the most important to the students, is the assessment of the group.  The instructor must develop a concrete rubric for grading the students.”

“Instructors cannot assume that students know how to work together, structure time, or delegate tasks.”

“The results showed that cooperation promotes higher achievement and greater productivity than do competitive or individualistic modes of learning and these results were consistent across all subject areas, all age groups, and for a variety of cognitively challenging tasks.”

“In short, the results of this meta-analysis indicate that cooperative learning in comparison to competitive and individualistic learning has very powerful effects on achievement, socialization, motivation, and personal self-development.”

“Group processing is critically important as it allows members to discuss how well they are achieving their goals and maintaining effective working relationships.”

“Furthermore, students worked better and achieved more when they worked in groups of 3-4 members than in groups of 5-7 members. Interestingly, the effects of group ability composition were different for students of different relative ability with low-ability students learning more in heterogeneous groups (high-, medium- & low-ability), medium-ability students benefited significantly more in homogeneous ability groups than heterogeneous ability groups while group composition made no difference to high ability students”

“Furthermore, students are more likely to achieve more when they work in groups of four or less members and preferably in mixed-ability groups rather than homogeneous ones.”

“As a consequence their language is often more spontaneous, varied, and creative and they communicate more positive affective messages to their students. This is in contrast to traditional, whole-class teaching where teachers’ language is often regarded as authoritarian, rigid, and less friendly, and teachers are often perceived as distant or impersonal.”

“They state that Johnsons’ survey of educational research demonstrates cooperation, in comparison with competitive and individualistic efforts, results in; · Higher achievement and greater productivity; · More caring, supportive, and committed relationships, and; · Greater psychological health, social competence and self esteem.”

“…(T)he term CL refers to an instruction method in which learners at various performance levels work together in small groups toward a common goal”

“CL helps students to resolve differences in a friendly manner.”

"Cooperative learning compared with competitive and individualistic efforts, has numerous benefits and typically results in higher achievement and greater productivity, more caring, supportive, and committed relationships; and greater psychological health, social competence, and self esteem."

“As a teacher aspiring to be effective, it is imperative to find alternative teaching methods that produce statistically significant improvement in students’ performance.  “

“Cooperative learning creates an interactive classroom for all students.  This interactivity may alleviate the challenges faced by lecturers and may assist in achieving other organizational objectives.”

“When students were asked to compare the teaching method used in their particular session to another teaching method, the responses from the cooperative classroom included preferences for the cooperative session because it caters for interaction, participation, and discussion.  They reported that the method allows for clarification and benefitted from the varying points of view within the classroom.  However, some students found the noisiness created by their interactions with each other disturbing and this affected their learning.”

“The findings suggest that there is no statistical difference in students’ understanding and application of the project management principle of motivation after being exposed to different methods of instruction.”

“…(I)t was found that experimental group students in Boys’ and Girls’ school were equivalent in their performance after cooperative learning implementation.”

This article studies cooperative learning it's effect on student achievement. It was found that while students tend to learn better in groups, there are many variables that effect the efficiency. Variables such as previous experience working in groups, the students’ opinion of the value of group work, and how clear the teacher is in explaining the purpose of the tasks can have an impact. It is also important to be sure that when analyzing the levels of participation, the researcher distinguished between physical activity, such as raising one’s hand, and cognitive ability, such as forming a deeper understanding of a concept. A downfall to cooperative learning is the confusion it may cause. Students may not feel as though they are getting correct information when all students in the group are struggling to come up with ideas. It was still found that many students prefer direct instruction, but I feel that this is because they need more experience with group work making it a norm in the classroom.

Meaningful Quotes:
“According to this theory, cooperation is most effective when students perceive that they share similar goals and when the individual members’ goals are positively dependent on the actions of the group.”

“However, results also indicate that changing the instructional method is in itself not enough to discourage a surface approach and promote a deep approach to learning.”

“Whereas some students valued the opportunity to become active in discussion, many students were frustrated that it meant less time for the tutor to ‘teach’, fewer notes and ‘right’ answers’, and greater exposure to misconceptions”

“From a teaching perspective, eliciting and correcting misunderstandings is an important function of teaching complex social science concepts, and indeed, many students were happy to engage in discussion. However, seen from the perspective of those students who expected a correct and comprehensive review, essentially a lecture, eliciting misunderstandings hardly made any sense.”

“First, the task and the subject matter have to be sufficiently challenging without being too difficult. Discussing, applying and interpreting might be more meaningful tasks to cooperate on than the easier task of defining and explaining concepts. Second, the teacher has to strike a very delicate balance between supporting students and ensuring they are on track without starting to lecture. This is indeed very difficult because some students strongly prefer the teacher to elicit the correct answer rather than facing the challenging task of engaging in conversation, confronting their own misconceptions and those of peers. Finally, students are unlikely to fully engage in cooperative learning unless it is meaningful to them and to students that are not internally motivated this might imply explicitly ensuring alignment between cooperative learning activities and assessment criteria. Teachers also need to invest time carefully explaining the intention and purpose of cooperative learning and confronting conceptions of university teaching in which the teaching is the passive transmission of information from tutor to student”