Group work is most effective when it is sequenced and structured, students are prepared in stages, and group skills have been taught and practiced. Four stages are necessary for preparing students for group work, including class-building; learning how to work with others (through practicing basic communication, team-building, and small-group…

As a dramatic arts professor's experience shows, children's lack of arts education inhibits their ability to communicate ideas spontaneously, respond with feeling, and discern quality from commercial junk. By contrast, a role-playing/research activity with 15 youngsters helped students express themselves creatively and build community in a…

Discusses educational technology and critical theory through the theories of Focault on training, politics, and ethics, and Friere on emancipating education that liberates and empowers the oppressed of society. Technological empowerment is considered, including technological literacy and collaborative and group learning. (Contains 30 references.)…

Discusses computer-supported cooperative learning (CSCL) in the context of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). Highlights include learning as a process in CSCW, learning as a task, learning research and CSCL, methodologies of researchers in CSCL, learning outcomes, and educational research issues in CSCL. Contains 62 references. (LRW)

Describes how second graders (in a bilingual class in which many of the students were nonreaders at the start of the school year) wrote and presented, over the course of the school year, their own Readers Theatre. (SR)

Describes a cooperative learning activity in which groups of students learn to critique content, form, and style of a student-produced newspaper, doing so constructively and without blaming, scapegoating, making excuses, or name-calling. (SR)

In two undergraduate business courses, students in instructor-assigned multidisciplinary teams analyzed organizational processes. The project emphasized cooperative learning, the interdisciplinary nature of work, and teamwork, with a total quality management foundation. Common rewards and resource dependence fostered positive interdependence. (SK)

Discusses problems in conducting and interpreting educational research results. Discusses weaknesses of cooperative learning and heterogeneous grouping. Suggests that good schools of the future will be where all pupils attain as much as possible. (RS)

Discusses collaborative projects developed between different teachers using online networks that allow students to create or write for an audience. Topics include gathering and sharing information online, cooperating in an integrated study, developing a final project, generating your own project, and joining an existing project. (LRW)

Discusses insights from both the instructional design community and members of research groups seeking to transform typical classrooms into "learning communities," and encourages discussion among members of these two communities. Gives an overview of frameworks for instructional design, and the principles of learning communities. (71…

Considers the goal of creating communities of learners and how to integrate technology with learning. Highlights include cognitive apprenticeships; qualities of meaningful learning, including constructivism and collaboration; assumptions about technology, including knowledge construction; proper roles for technology; and how to support meaningful…

Discusses problems with freshman research paper assignments. Describes how one teacher has adapted cooperative learning techniques to research assignments, allowing students to work together in "base" and "expert" groups. Describes four structured writing assignments on a single subject of general public interest that lends itself to specialized…

Marian Matthews insists that she selected a school with exemplary cooperative-learning practices for her interviews with gifted students summarized in the October 1992 issue of "Educational Leadership." The students interviewed cared about their classmates but did not understand their differing values. Neither artificial incentives nor…

Considers ways of implementing collaborative learning techniques into the teaching of William Shakespeare in the high school English curriculum. Argues for allowing students to predict the action after viewing only one act of a play. Shows how group work enhanced students' thinking processes. (HB)

Describes using the strategic planning report process in business communication classrooms, thus requiring students to work collaboratively and to apply business school learning. (SR)