Cooperative Learning and Learners' Autonomy

Moroccan Association of Teachers of EnglishCasablanca MATE DayFriday 23rd, November 2012

Enhancing students’ Autonomy through Collaborative Learning

Abdeslam Badre

[email protected]

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Outine

• Why do we need Autonomous learners?• What is the purpose of Collaborative

learning?• How could it be implemented?

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Abdeslam Badre - Cablanca - Nov. 2012

How autonomous are Moroccan Students?

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Moroccan Student’s perception of Autonomy and Collaboration

• In-class, Do you prefer group-work tasks/activities or individual activities?

Imagine you came to class, and did not find the teacher, but a note that read:

“ there students, today I am going to be 30 minutes late, so please feel free to do any activity, till I

arrive”? Your teacher.• What would you do?

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Moroccan Student’s perception of Autonomy and Collaboration

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I. Developing Autonomous Learners

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Developing Autonomous Learners • Self-Access Lge Learners: Ss’ understanding of who they are,

their perceptions and memories of their life experiences and social interactions, as well as their hopes and dreams of the person they would like to become

• Learners’ Meta-cognition: what a learner knows about how he or she learns a language; and, therefore, view it as a process of relating the language learning to the self

• Imagination : people learn by becoming members of communities of practice, as they participate in the activities of these social groups, they learn from the more experienced, knowledgeable members. In terms of language learning, this means that learners might imagine themselves participating in target language communities.

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II. Cooperative Learning

• What is it?• What is it not?• There are three basic ways students can interact with

each other as they learn:• They can compete to see who is "best"; • They can work individualistically on their own toward a

goal without paying attention to other students; • They can work cooperatively with a vested interest in

each other’s learning as well as their own.

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Criteria for effective cooperative learning groups include:

• Students understand that their membership in a learning group means that they either succeed or fail—together: Acceptance by a group that they "sink or swim together.

• "Positive interdependence" includes mutual goals, joint rewards, resource interdependence (each group member has different resources that must be combined to complete the assignment), and role interdependence (each group member is assigned a specific role).

• Students help each other learn and encourage individual team members' success.

• Individuals in the group understand that they are accountable to each other and to the group as a distinct unit.

• Interpersonal and small-group skills are in place, including communication, decision making, conflict resolution, and time management.

• Members are aware of the group's processes. Individual members talk about "the group" as a unique entity.

• Organizing students in heterogeneous cooperative learning groups at least once a week has a significant effect on learning

• Low-ability students perform worse when grouped in homogeneous ability groups • Cooperative learning can be ineffective when support structures are not in place11/23/12 Gains 10


Benefits

It promotes:• Team Work Spirit• Recognizing the importance of each member of the group• Promoting learning• Helping shy students come out of their shell

Students• Enjoy the learning process and achieve more• Learn to communicate well with each other and have a more positive

expectation about working with others• More positive about school, subject areas, and teachers or professors• More positive about each other – regardless of differences in ability,

ethnic background, handicapped or not.• More able to take the perspective of others and more positive about

taking part in controversy

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Planning the Cooperative learning 1. Select a lesson2. Select the groups’ size3. Assign the students to groups4. Arrange the classroom. 5. Provide the appropriate materials: ( one answer

sheet to be turned in by the group or "jigsaw”)

6. Explain the task & structure : A clear and specific description of the task needs to be given coupled with an explanation of the group goal

7. Teacher Group-Monitoring: cooperative group does not take the place of instruction, but instead translates it and makes it useful.

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Your Role:• Determine what skills are lacking (subject-matter &interaction)

• Set up a way for the groups to process, discuss & how to do even better

• Intervene to help groups work out their own problems• Use a variety of strategies when choosing students for

groups (common clothing, favorite colors, letters in names, birthdays)

• Support new groups: Meet with new group members to support their success. Teach specific skills before grouping students, define criteria for success, and develop rubrics for key expectations

• monitor carefully how well the groups are functioning• Facilitate success• Don't use cooperative learning for all instructional goals

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Remember!

– It is also important to establish criteria for success as a classroom in order to make intergroup cooperation possible and extend the cooperativeness across the class

– It is also necessary to specify the basic behaviors you expect to see in the groups so that students have an "operational" definition of what cooperation is

– Quick consensus without discussion does not enhance learning as effectively as having different perspectives discussed, arguing different alternatives, explaining

– A lot of the power for learning in cooperative groups come from the need for discussion, explanation, justification, and shared resolution on the material being learned

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Some Cooperative Learning Classroom Activities

1. Discussion: A good give-and-take discussion can produce unmatched learning experiences as students articulate their ideas, respond to their classmates' points

2. Think-pair-share: provides the opportunity to reflect on the question posed and then practice sharing and receiving potential solutions

3. Group grid: Students practice organizing and classifying information in a table

4. Three-step interview: Students are first paired and take turns interviewing each other using a series of questions provided by the instructor. Pairs then match up and students introduce their original partner. At the end of the exercise, all students have had their position or viewpoints on an issue heard

5. Note-taking pairs: Designing an exercise which requires students to summarize their understanding of a concept based on notes and receiving reflective feedback from their partner provides students the opportunity to find critical gaps in their written records.

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http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/interactive/tpshare.html


Some Cooperative Learning Classroom Activities…

6. Jigsaw: this structure provides students the opportunity to develop expertise in one of many components of a problem by first participating in a group solely focused on a single component. In the second stage of the exercise, groups are reformed with a representative from each expert group who together now have sufficient expertise to tackle the whole problem

7. Graphic organizers: powerful tools for converting complex information in to meaningful displays...They can provide a framework for gathering and sorting ideas for discussion, writing, and research

8. Sequence chains: The goal of this exercise is to provide a visual representation of a series of events, actions, roles, or decisions. Students can be provided with the items to be organized or asked to first generate these based on a predetermined end goal. This structure can be made more complex by having students also identify and describe the links between each of the sequenced components

9. Dyadic essays: Students prepare for the in-class portion of this exercise by developing an essay question and model answer based on assigned reading. Students typically need to be guided to develop questions that integrate material across classes. Then, they exchange essay questions and write a spontaneous answer essay; then, compare and contrast the model answer and the spontaneously generated answer

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http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/jigsaws/index.html


Some Cooperative Learning Classroom Activities…

10. Peer editing: As opposed to the editing process that often appears only at the final stage of a paper, peer editing pairs up students at the idea generation stage and peers provide feedback throughout the process. For example, the relationship begins as each student in the pair describes their topic ideas and outlines the structure of their work while their partner asks questions, and develops an outline based on what is described.

11. Send-a-problem: Students participate in a series of problem solving rounds, contributing their independently generated solution to those that have been developed by other groups. After a number of rounds, students are asked to review the solutions developed by their peers, evaluate the answers and develop a final solution

12. Three-stay, one-stray: Even students working in groups can benefit from the feedback of additional peers. In this structure, students periodically take a break from their work and send one group member to another group to describe their progress. The role of the group is to gain information and alternative perspectives by listening and sharing. The number of times the group sends a representative to another group depends on the level of complexity of the problem. This method can also be used to report out final solutions.

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Example: Jigsaw• Divide students into 5- or 6-person jigsaw groups. The groups should be diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity,

race, and ability.• Appoint one student from each group as the leader. Initially, this person should be the most mature student

in the group.• Divide the day's lesson into 5-6 segments. For example, if you want history students to learn about Eleanor

Roosevelt, you might divide a short biography of her into stand-alone segments on: (1) Her childhood, (2) Her family life with Franklin and their children, (3) Her life after Franklin contracted polio, (4) Her work in the White House as First Lady, and (5) Her life and work after Franklin's death.

• Assign each student to learn one segment, making sure students have direct access only to their own segment.

• Give students time to read over their segment at least twice and become familiar with it. There is no need for them to memorize it.

• Form temporary "expert groups" by having one student from each jigsaw group join other students assigned to the same segment. Give students in these expert groups time to discuss the main points of their segment and to rehearse the presentations they will make to their jigsaw group.

• Bring the students back into their jigsaw groups.• Ask each student to present her or his segment to the group. Encourage others in the group to ask questions

for clarification.• Float from group to group, observing the process. If any group is having trouble (e.g., a member is

dominating or disruptive), make an appropriate intervention. Eventually, it's best for the group leader to handle this task. Leaders can be trained by whispering an instruction on how to intervene, until the leader gets the hang of it.

• At the end of the session, give a quiz on the material so that students quickly come to realize that these sessions are not just fun and games but really count.

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Conclusion• Having students work together cooperatively is a powerful way

for them to learn and has positive effects on the classroom climate

• Being able to perform technical skills such as reading, speaking, listening, writing, computing, problem-solving, etc., are valuable but of little use if the person cannot apply those skills in cooperative interaction with other people in career, family, and community settings

• The most logical way to emphasize the use of student’s knowledge and skills within a cooperative framework, such as they will meet as members of society, is to spend much of the time learning those skills in cooperative relationships with each other

• The ability of all students to learn to work cooperatively with others is the keystone to building and maintaining stable marriages, families, careers, and friendships.

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Thank you!

[email protected]

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Documents

Cooperative Learning and Learners' Autonomy