This is an article I found online about a professor who set up her own cooperative learning experiment after discovering that her students spent their after school hours doing their work in "homework cartels."
Experiment's Purpose:
To compare, using empirical research methodology, traditional individual methods and cooperative learning methods.
Hypothesis:
College students taught using cooperative methods would have higher measures of achievement and better attitudes toward instruction that those taught using traditional individual-oriented methods.
Cooperative groups use the "Think-Pair-Share" technique to answering questions. Students listen to teacher posed questions from out of class readings, and discuss them with their "learning partner."
"Drill-and-Review Dyads" (recaller, listener)
The article identified group incentive, a factor that motivates students to urge fellow students to perform well, to be the single most important component for improving achievement outcomes.
In comparing the achievement of both groups, the cooperative class outperformed the traditional class significantly.
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