Are You A Team Player?
After reading this week's assigned articles, what stood out the most to me is the long standing broad foundation of research that supports the use of Cooperative Learning. Research has shown that cooperative learning improves academic performance, improves students' attitudes, and improves relationships between students and faculty. Meta-data shows that there are indeed many more advantages to using Cooperative Learning. Yet, at the same time, it was apparent that especially in recent years the "traditional" classroom environment that has dominated our grade schools and universities is more competitive and individualistic. How did this happen?
Of course, using a Cooperative Learning format requires more instructor preparation time and many students do reject Cooperative Learning assignments/activities when they are so accustomed to looking out for number one and/or unable to see the practicality or pertinence of the assigned tasks.
As for my future teaching plans, I can't imagine teaching Expressive Art Therapy concepts without using Cooperative Learning in the process. The goals of increasing teamwork, improving negotiation skills, increasing confidence, developing higher order cognitive processing and enhancing creativity among students would be nicely met by using a Cooperative Learning approach. I still haven't figured out - how exactly will I do this in an online environment? I am open to your ideas and suggestions!
Of course, using a Cooperative Learning format requires more instructor preparation time and many students do reject Cooperative Learning assignments/activities when they are so accustomed to looking out for number one and/or unable to see the practicality or pertinence of the assigned tasks.
As for my future teaching plans, I can't imagine teaching Expressive Art Therapy concepts without using Cooperative Learning in the process. The goals of increasing teamwork, improving negotiation skills, increasing confidence, developing higher order cognitive processing and enhancing creativity among students would be nicely met by using a Cooperative Learning approach. I still haven't figured out - how exactly will I do this in an online environment? I am open to your ideas and suggestions!
Posted by Cindy at 2/12/2010 12:17 AM 
Categories: ECI 517
Tags: Advanced Multimedia Expressive Art Therapy ECI 517 Cooperative Learning
Categories: ECI 517
Tags: Advanced Multimedia Expressive Art Therapy ECI 517 Cooperative Learning
Have you heard of Journey North? Journey North is a very successful online cooperative/collaborative project where students track the migration of various animals as well as the emergence of plants in the spring. Without the online involvement, this would just be another website about animals and plants but with literally the whole continent watching and contributing information, the site is a living, changing, amazing documentation of nature on North America. I think Journey North is one of the very best examples of online cooperative learning. Check it out:http://www.learner.org/jnorth/
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I appreciated your commitment to using cooperative learning in your own classroom. I agree with you that the research supporting it is powerful. The tools that stuck out to me for online learning in a collaborative environment were elluminate and skype. I don't know if that helps. I know Dr. Oliver mentioned these in the lectures too.
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Hi Jill & Rachel,
Thanks so much for the suggestions and ideas!
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Hi Cindy, when you spoke of how to utilize Collaborative Learning in your own teaching, I too was puzzled at how that could be incorporated into certain subjects and environments. I would love to see statistics relating to which courses/subjects were better suited for Collaborative Learning and the breakdown of online versus traditional classroom settings.
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Candice, Oh yeah! That sounds like an excellent research project!
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