Cooperative and Collaborative Learning

Cooperative/ collaborative learning it’s a teaching method that has been used since the late 1980’s and its purpose is to engage the students in a deep discussion of a subject and to provide as a result a deeper understanding of the subject, Cooperative/collaborative learning takes the form of small groups and they are given the task to explore a subject, question, task or project, most of the time the whole purpose of the task is to engage the students in a discussion and to explore different perspectives opinions and teamwork, the group work is highly encouraged but there is also a lot of interest in holding individual students accountable for their own work, even though at the end of the lesson the group will be assessed as a whole.
Cooperative/collaborative groups take such a small form because this will encourage students to learn how to deal with different opinions, it will also help students who might not have developed social skills, but the main reason why the group assignments are so popular it’s because the debate and discussion that takes place in a group will give students a greater understanding of the lesson itself.
The Cooperative/collaborative learning it’s very different form the classic approach to teaching because it deviates from the formula of individual lessons, and stimulates the student social abilities by encouraging team work. Cooperative/collaborative groups can take different forms, the most common are: Pair: which is the simplest of them all, it involves students getting together in groups of two to perform a single activity.
The next type is called Jigsaw, in this type of group students will study one topic either individually or as a group, then once the student or group has a full knowledge of the topic he will explain his topic to the rest of the group, or to other groups.
The last of the most popular types of groups is called the Split-Class Discussion and like the name states it requires for the whole class to be split in two, and discuss or debate a topic, most of the time the topics would be of a controversial type, and they be highly contrasting, so that the students will learn from the debate.
Cooperative/collaborative groups are highly used today, and they have a great number of benefits, including the encouragement of diversity and respect in the classroom, the environment that a cooperative group should portray is one of respect, safety, teamwork and finally it should also include a clear task or goal to be obtained.