Cooperative Learning

Cooperative

Being cooperative is a skill that each one of us must possess. It is an important aspect of life. We, as social beings, have to cooperate and cooperation is necessary in every field, be it for social relationships or professional relationships.

About Cooperative Learning

Learning is an activity. It is an ongoing activity that each of us experience in our lives. Each person is a special individual and hence the way in which each one learns is also individualistic. How well we learn and how we apply whatever is learnt is all a part of our genetic framework. To improve instruction, the instructors must realize that each student learns differently. To improve learning, you have to devote more time to each individual student. However, this is not possible due to lack of resources. This is where cooperative learning comes into the picture.

Cooperative leaning, very simply stated, is about putting students into structured groups. The groups are formed to achieve certain academic goals. The reason that groups are formed is so that the students help each other to learn and achieve those goals by pooling together their talents and skills.

Benefits of Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is extremely beneficial. The benefits are on two levels. There are benefits accessible to the learner and to the teacher. We will talk about benefits to the learner. Cooperative learning encourages students to perform better than in individualistic competitive environments. Cooperative learning more often than not results in better reasoning, idea generation and better application skills.

• Improved performance – Cooperative learning helps the learner in achieving better academic performance.
• Favorable for minority – Cooperative learning helps minority students achieve their academic goals more effectively.
• Positive effect – There is a positive effect on self-esteem, social skills, attitude and confidence of students who work in a cooperative learning environment.
• Better understanding – As the students are helping each other learn the material; they have a better understanding of it themselves.
• Improves peer skills – As students are working together in a cooperative environment, their people skills improve along with other social skills and they do not feel peer pressure.

Advantage to the disadvantaged – Students with a disadvantage that could be dyslexia or learning disabilities benefit and have an advantage with this learning technique.