cooperative learning

Cooperative (sometime known as Collaborative) Learning is a model of teaching with a set of common attributes and features. It is cognitive in nature. It also has several variations. The following are its essential features: students work in teams to master academic materials, teams are made up of high, average, and low achievers, and are racially and sexually mixed, reward systems are group-oriented rather than individually oriented. (Arends, 1994, p. 344) Some of the variations are:

1. Student Teams Achievement Divisions (STAD) where team members use work sheets or other study devices to master the academic materials and then help each other learn the material. Individually students take weekly quizzes and are given an "improvement score". This score is based on the degree to which the score exceeds a student's past average. Teams strive to get a good team improvement score.
2. Jigsaw where each student on the team would be responsible to become 'an expert' in one aspect of the academic task and are responsible for teaching that aspect to the others. Members from different teams who are to be experts on the same topic meet to help each other learn their aspect of the task. They then return to their group to share what they learned and plan their presentation to the class.
3. Group Investigation where students are involved in planning both the topics for study and the ways to proceed with their investigation. Students will choose a topic for study, proceed with an in-depth investigation of that topic and prepare and present a report to the whole class