Oftentimes in traditional group work students are told to go off and work in a group, meet outside of class, produce a joint product, and then the product gets graded. There isn't much else. Whereas in a formal cooperative group, one: there's careful consideration of "What's the purpose? Why are we asking students to work in groups?" when we make sure that there's clear interdependence-that there's a reason for them to work together, or many reasons for them to work together. Most common are challenging tasks, something that one person would have difficulty doing by him or herself. Another is a natural division of labor, where different people do different things that all contribute to the group's work or group's success, creating role interdependence. So in cooperative learning groups, especially the Johnson and Johnson model, there is a lot of structure. Typically we structure things around a set of five basic elements: interdependence, accountability, face-to-face interaction where people are helping one another, a set of teamwork skills, and then processing. But the key, the heart of it, is really the interdependence and accountability. And the accountability piece is often missing, that's what the students say-one person does the work, others share the credit. This creates frustration, and that happens very commonly in traditional groups, unfortunately.                             

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