Cooperative learning

Useful links and resources that will help you understand and apply Collaborative and Cooperative Learning in your classroom.

Cooperative Learning is a relationship in a group of students that requires positive interdependence (a sense of sink or swim together), individual accountability (each of us has to contribute and learn), interpersonal skills (communication, trust, leadership, decision making, and conflict resolution), face-to-face promotive interaction, and processing (reflecting on how well the team is functioning and how to function even better).

Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. Students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it. 

Richard Felder has written or co-authored a number of papers about the use of active and cooperative instructional methods in college science and engineering courses, some reporting on his own classroom research studies and some summarizing the literature. References listed as hot links may be viewed and downloaded from this site.