People learn the things I want them to learn to a much greater extent. They learn the content. They learn the material. They learn how to solve chemical engineering problems more at a deeper level than they used to when I didn’t use this technique. But even more important than that, they are learning some of the skills that they are going to need when they go out into the working environment. They are learning how to communicate. They’re learning how to work with other people, which they’re going to have to do. You go to work now, as a chemical engineer—nobody is going to sit you down and say, “Good morning, Mr. Jones. Welcome to the company. How do you like to work? Do you like to work by yourself or do you like to work with other people?” It’s not going to happen. You’re going to go to work and they’re going to put you in teams, whether you like it or not, and they’re learning the skills they’re going to need to do that. They’re acquiring leadership skills. They’re acquiring communication skills. They’re learning something about time management, and they’re learning a lot about themselves in the course of working with other people and finding out how other people approach things differently than they do. These are all life-long learning skills. They’re all, to me, more important than learning to design a distillation column or solve a differential equation. Using cooperative learning, you’re requiring those skills. Watching me, listening to me in class, and going home doing homework by themselves, they’re learning none of them. I’m going to stay with this technique.

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