Effective Team Work and Group Process Human

Relations

Chapter 11: Cooperative Learning in the Classroom

By Jacqueline Malcolm, Grace Corda, Zaeem

Minan, Melissa Joseph

Introduction to Cooperative Learning

Cooperative Learning is the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize everyone's learning.

Within cooperative learning groups, students discuss the material to be learned with one another, help one another to understand it, and encourage one another to work hard.

Types of Cooperative LearningFormal Cooperative

learning Informal Cooperative

Learning Cooperative base

groups Completes assignment, lesson, unit, project to maximize own and group

mates’ learning.

Discusses assigned questions for a few minutes to focus attention, organize knowledge, set expectations create mood, ensure cognitive processing and rehearsal, summarize, provide closure.

Permanent; lasts for one semester, one year, or several years to ensure that all members make academic progress and develop cognitively and socially in healthy ways .

Teacher Procedure Teacher Procedure Teacher Procedure

Make Reinstruction Decisions.

Explain task and cooperative structure.

Monitor learning groups and intervene to improve task work and team work.

Asses learning and monitor group effectiveness.

Conduct introductory focused discussion.

Conduct Intermittent-pair discussions every ten or fifteen minutes.

Conduct closure-focused discussion.

Structure opening class meeting to check homework, ensure that members understand academic material, complete routine tasks such as taking attendance, and prepare members for the day.

Structure ending class meetings to ensure that all members understand academic material, know what homework to do, and are making progress on long-term assignments.

Members help and assist each other learn between classes Conduct semester- or year-long school or class service projects

Specifying the Instructional Objectives

To plan for a lesson, you must know what the lesson is aimed at accomplishing.

You need to specify academic objectives and social skills objectives that detail what interpersonal and small groups skills you wish to emphasize during the lesson

Group size depends on “Team”

T = Time limits

E = Experience working in groups

A = Age

M = Materials and equipment available

Assigning students to groups

By stratified random -1 or 2 characteristics

Better dept of understanding, perspectives

Problem solving & cognitive and social development

More cognitive disequilibrium

Interdependence & problem solving

Specific roles can be used to:

Reduce problems no contributions or member dominating the group

Ensure group members learn to target skills

Create interdependence among groups

Classroom Designs

Labels, signs for boundaries of space

Colour, form, lightning attracts visual attention on points of emphasis

Materials distributed and arranged that communicates joint effort

Task

Define three things:

What assignment is?

What to do in order to complete it

How to do it

“Sink or swim together”

Feedback

Recognize efforts and contributions

Provides remediation or needed assistance

Reassigns responsibilities to avoid and redundant efforts by members

Social skills

Be specific, start small, don’t overload; and emphasize over learning

Students must teach both academic subject, task work, and interpersonal skills required to work in a group

Monitor and Intervene

Monitor each learning group, intervene when needed to improve task work and team work.Monitor students, BehaviorProviding task assistanceIntervene to teach social skillsProvide closure to the lesson

Evaluate and Process Group Interaction

Assess the quality and quantity of learning

Process how well the group has functioned

Four parts of processing

1. Feedback

2. Analysis

3. Celebration

4. Reflection

Informal Cooperative Learning Groups

Focuses student attention on material

Set a mood conducive to learning

Helps cognitively organize material

Sets attention and provides closure

Allow for identifying and correcting misconceptions, incorrect understanding, and gaps in comprehension

Personalizes learning experiences

Using informal cooperative learning

Two important aspects of using informal cooperative learning

Make the task and the instructions explicit and precise

Require the groups to produce a specific product, such as a written answer

Base group

They may be used in two ways

Class group

School base group

The Agendas of both types of base groups

Academic support tasks: Base group members encourage one another to master course content and complete all assignments.

Personal support tasks: listens sympathetically when a member has a problem.

Routine tasks: provides a structure for managing course procedures such as taking attendance and homework.

Assessment and evaluation tasks: provides a structure for assessing and evaluating student academic learning.

Forming Base GroupsGroup size: Three or Four members

Assigning Students: Random assignment to ensure heterogeneity

Arranging the room: providing a permanent place for each group to meet

Preparing materials: Standard forms students use at each meeting; group file folders

Assigning roles: Runner, explainer, accuracy checker, encourager

The Cooperative SchoolIn a cooperative school, students work primary in cooperative teams. Each level of cooperative teams supports and enhances the other levels.

A cooperative school structure begins in the classroom with the predominant use of cooperative learning (Johnson & Johnson,1994). Work teams are the heart of the team-based organizational structure, and cooperative learning groups are the primary work teams.

The second level in creating a cooperative school is to create faculty-based cooperative teams and a school-based decision-making procedure.

Summary

To increase your expertise in using cooperative learning is to use all three goal structures – cooperation, competition, and individual work ( in an integrated way ).

An example of the integrated use of cooperative learning procedures is to have students arrive at class and meet in their base groups.

The teacher uses informal cooperative learning groups by helping students understand the advantages and disadvantages of being humans.

All three types of cooperative learning tend to be used during a lesson. The lesson begins with a base group meeting, the instructor may present new material while using informal cooperative learning, a formal cooperative learning lesson is conducted, the instructor summarizes using informal cooperative learning, and the class ends with a base group meeting.