Hey Jason,
Thanks for taking the time to find such a great podcast and highlighting key points from it! I gave it a listen and really gained a lot from what Jennifer Gonzalez presented.
I thought it was interesting, and incredibly helpful, that you chose to focus your blog post more on difficulties and potential unwanted outcomes of this style of learning. We often hear about the benefits of it, but it’s so important to consider all sides of what we’d be diving into as future educators. Along with this, I always appreciate learning guidelines that can help make teaching successful, as you’ve offered with Gillies five components. Cooperative learning has always struck me as being a straightforward but effective approach, but I can see now that there is more to it if we really want to make the most out of it!
Hi Hang,
Thanks for your post about cooperative learning! You mention a few times about the idea of student responsibility – being responsible for their own contributions to the group, for their their own learning, as well as their groupmates contributions and learning. This seems like an effective way to boost student motivation and get students actively engaging in their learning.
As I was reading your post, I did pause as I hit these two ideas:
“Students are separated into a small group, each group contains three to four members… each group should contain high achievers and low achievers”
My question that rises from this is: Does this mean cooperative learning always needs to be fully organized, with groups being specifically selected by the teacher to meet these guidelines? I agree that these may be the best parameters to ensure the maximum cooperation and learning, but will learning still happen with more/less students in a group, or if students were to select their own groups?
It sounds like this type of learning could fit great in your blueprint. I’m so looking forward to seeing your final learning resource!