Fostering student collaboration with their peers is an essential skill that students will take with them far beyond the classroom. Working in pairs or in groups will develop life-long skills that students will utilize when a collaborative situation is brought about either in the work place or in higher education.
Cooperative learning is an instructional approach were students are grouped together in order to solve or meet a specific objective at the end of a unit, lesson, or program of study. In using this instructional approach group sizes should not exceed more than four students. Every student should be assigned a role such as team facilitator, researcher, writer/recorder/reflector, presenter, etc. More importantly, students should be grouped based on varying skill sets and abilities. For example, the group of students working together should have varying achievement levels. Stronger performing students should be grouped with lesser performing students. This way of grouping encourages every student to participate in the group activity/assignment and allows for peer-to-peer encouragement and explanation of material. Because the grade assigned to the group is collective, every student must work according to their role. Stronger students will encourage under performing students to work harder.
Cooperative learning moves strays away from the traditional “lecture-focused” approach, were the instructor is the sole proprietor of knowledge. Cooperative learning helps student retention of information, encourages participation, promotes higher levels of self-esteem and achievement levels of under performing students can be enhanced.
Reference website(s):
https://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperative/index.html
