This ERIC digest looks at how college faculty can use cooperative learning principles to ensure that students actively create their own knowledge and work together to achieve shared learning goals. The first section describes cooperative learning and recommends training professors to apply an overall system to build cooperative activities,…

Changes in the way contemporary organizations conduct business demand a concurrent redesign of teaching and testing methods. Maintaining instructional quality must begin with knowledge of the quality revolution in contemporary organizations in order to meet the demands of these organizations for self-confident, self-directed, self-motivated,…

This book offers practical guidelines for implementing cooperative-collaborative learning in the classroom. Included are research reviews, sample lesson plan formats, suggestions for peer coaching, and forms and materials that teachers may duplicate. The book's 17 chapters are divided into three sections on cooperative group learning; partner…

A program using cooperative learning to improve the teamwork skills of high school-level vocational home economics students in multicultural, economically diverse communities was developed and tested during a 5-month action research project. The research phase of the project included the following: 71 of the students enrolled in the classes Home…

An intervention project sought to lower the grade retention rates of kindergarten, first-, and second-grade students in one New Jersey school district. During three school years, 1987-1990, the retention rate was 7 percent of the total population of these grades. An exploration of causes identified several possible factors, including: (1) lack of…

Cooperative learning (CL) is reviewed as a tool for helping educationally disadvantaged or limited-English-speaking students. A review of meta analyses and literature on CL indicates its effectiveness when both group goals and individual accountability are incorporated into learning methods. The achievement gap between traditional majority…

This executive summary reports on a study which utilized meta-analysis and best-evidence synthesis techniques to evaluate 13 research studies on the academic, social, and psychological effects upon learners who are gifted and talented of three grouping practices: (1) ability grouping for enrichment; (2) mixed ability cooperative grouping for…

This discussion of cooperative second language learning describes the approach in terms of response to three questions: WHO? WHAT? and WHY? The first section "WHO: Major Directors and Actors," chronicles the evolution of cooperative learning in general and cooperative language learning in particular, citing some specific methods and the…

The CHEMATH course at Edmonds Community College integrates instruction in algebra and chemistry. The course emphasizes problem-solving techniques and relies on active learning through the use of structured group process techniques. CHEMATH is team taught by science and math faculty and is intended primarily for students planning to major in…

The interactions of three high school juniors (two females and one male) working together on a series of contextual mathematics problems using a multirepresentational software tool were studied. Focus was on determining how a constructivist model of learning, based on an individual problematic-action-reflection model, can be extended to offer…

This book relies on three categories (visions, contexts, and roles) to explore school renewal as promulgated by participants in the National Education Association's Mastery in Learning Project. Following MIL Project Director Robert McClure's introduction covering participants' collegiality-building experiences, the "Visions" section…

This final report describes activities of the 3-year Generalized InService Training (GIST) Project to develop and field test an inservice training model for educators serving children with moderate, severe, and profound handicaps. Critical elements of the approach are identified, including: (1) training of educators and supervisors to work…

RAED provides a computerised infrastructure to support the development and administration of Vicarious Learning in collaborative learning communities spread across multiple universities and workplaces. The system is based on the OASIS middleware for Role-based Access Control. This paper describes the origins of the model and the approach to…

This paper describes the results of several teaching experiments in the teaching Studio of The University of Dayton's Learning-Teaching Center. The Studio is a state-of-the-art classroom with a flexible seating arrangements and movable whiteboards and corkboards for small group discussions. The Studio has a communications system with a TV/VCR…

Asynchronous discussion allows students to read and respond "out-of-time." This form of online discussion, as experienced in a college literacy course, creates a text of talk that has the potential to be reflective given the freedom participants have in their response time. However, students often struggle with reflection. Instructors…