Students often use study groups to prepare for class or exams; yet to date, we know very little about how these groups actually function. This study looked at the ways in which undergraduate organic chemistry students prepared for exams through self-initiated study groups. We sought to characterize the methods of social regulation, levels of…

This paper presents findings from a study that explored students' perceptions of cooperative learning strategies used in educational administration classes. Specifically, the study sought to determine whether students perceived the strategies to be more effective than traditional methods in increasing their knowledge and retention and in improving…

This paper offers a synthesis of research on cooperative learning in small groups. The main challenge for teachers who utilize cooperative learning is to stimulate the type of interaction desired according to their teaching objective. A generalization regarding student interactions is that if students are not taught differently, they will tend to…

During the past decade, many American companies have shifted their work styles from classically controlling management styles to self-motivating teams. For this reason, a few communication educators are now exploring alternative models of teaching. If students have the opportunity to experience many of the concepts covered in organizational…

A cooperative activity involving eight sixth grade students over five days focused on inventing static representations of motion. In generating, critiquing and refining numerous representations, strong metarepresentational competence was found. An intricate blend of the children's conceptual and interactional skills, their interest in and sense of…

This monograph explores the current use in higher education of cooperative learning, the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each other's learning. The opening section sets out to define cooperative learning, and to look at the history of the technique, its basic elements, types of cooperative…