Lesson 13: Cooperative Learning with the Computer

Content

         

      Cooperative or collaborative learning is learning by small groups of students who work together in a common learning task. It is also often called group learning but to be truly cooperative learning, there are five elements needed. These are common goal, interdependence, interaction, individual accountability, and social skills.

          From several studies made on cooperative learning, it is manifested that cooperative learning in its true sense is advantageous since it encourages active learning while motivating students, increase academic performance, promotes literacy and language skills, and improve teacher effectiveness.

          Researchers have made studies on the learning interaction between the student and the computer. The studies have great value since it has been a long standing fear that the computer may foster student learning in isolation that hinders the development of the student’s social skills. In that case therefore, assign the teacher several tasks in order to ensure collaborative learning. These are assigning students to mixed-ability teams, establishing positive interdependence, teaching cooperative social skills, insuring individual accountability, and helping groups’ process information.

Experience

          

      Making science journal is what I’ve experience presently to my Earth Science subject were we – together with my group mates need to cooperate each other to come up with best result. We are able to get data and related researches link to the activity, of course, using computer. The group activity may paralyze without the participation in even one of the member, thus, cooperation is very important to achieve the common work goal. Other experienced group activities are research paper and power point presentation.

Reflection

          

     Cooperative learning in today’s generation is quite hard without the advent of computer. It is possible but takes long period of time before coming up with best result. Through the aid of computer, it helps students interact each other for any advices and mutual help. But some says that the use of computer do not automatically result in cooperative learning. Therefore, the teacher must set several tasks in order to ensure collaborative learning.

Application

          

    As future educator, presenting various activities will help a lot to students’ progress and development. I prefer to group my future students with various ability levels, through these appears more collaborative and effective group learning unlike to homogeneous way of grouping. I will also set several tasks with regards to the activity related to computer, for them to avoid exploring things that could catch their attention instead of doing such activity.