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Active learning is anything
in which students do anything in the classroom but watch me
and listen to me—if I am the lecturer. They are talking to
each other. They’re writing things, reflecting, trying to
solve problems, whatever. And they may be doing it
individually, and they may be doing it together. As long as
it is anything but watching me or listening to me, it is
active learning. Cooperative learning is a much more formal
kind of activity. I use that for exercises—usually homework,
or projects—where students are working in teams that stay
together for extended periods of time. They are working on
things under conditions that involve five criteria. I’m
using a model from
Johnson and Johnson for
cooperative learning; there are several others out there.
The five criteria are: positive interdependence—that means
the team members have to count on one another to do what
they are supposed to do, otherwise everyone loses;
individual accountability—which means everyone is held
responsible for what they’re supposed to be doing, and
they’re also held responsible for what everyone else is
doing—one way or the other; face-to-face interaction—at
least part of the time. Now it can’t be the kind of thing
where, you do problem one, you do problem two, I do problem
three, and we come together, staple them, and hand them in.
That happens a lot, but that is not cooperative learning.
The fourth is the development of interpersonal skills you
need to work effectively in teams. Students are not born
knowing how to do these things—conflict resolution,
communication, leadership, time management, and so forth.
There has to be some attention paid to helping students
learn how to do those things. And the fifth condition is
regular self-assessment of group functioning. Periodically,
students have to stand back from what they’re doing and ask
themselves, “What are we doing well as a team? What could we
be doing better? What are we going to differently next
time?” The extent that the team activities have those five
elements in place is the extent that you are doing
cooperative learning by the definition I use.
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