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TEACHER TRAINING SEMINAR
Preview Seminar 7: Cooperative learning strategies

This week we will discuss various approaches to get students to work together, in pairs or groups, and its potential benefits and pitfalls. As part of this we will discuss the following papers:

pairs.pdf, basegroups.pdf, science.pdf

In order to facilitate discussion, please read these papers before the seminar, write a response to the articles and bring it to class. The response should be about all three readings and 1-2 pages long.

The first two papers are chapters from Small Group Instruction in Higher Education: Lessons from the Past, Visions of the Future edited by James l. Cooper, Pamela Robinson, and David Ball. The third is an article published in Science about a study that was run in a large-enrollment physics course about the impact of active and cooperative learning strategies on the students' learning. It's a remarkable study with rather astounding results.

Here are some things to think about as you're reading and to perhaps help you form your response:

Pairs) How might you be able to incorporate the outlined strategies into the course you are currently teaching and/or courses you want to teach in the future? What difficulties can you foresee in trying to implement such strategies?

Base Groups - Chapters 19 and 20) How have the various stages of small-group development affected groups you've observed (this can be as a group member, as an instructor, as an outside observer, whatever)? How do you think you might be able to help groups get through these stages? What use can you see for Base Groups in the course you are currently teaching and/or courses you want to teach in the future? It is strongly recommended in the research literature that groups are heterogenous in as many dimensions as possible. What do you think of this recommendation? How do you think it may enable groups to work more effectively together? How do you think it might hinder their efficacy?

Science) Why was it important to collect data on the students in the two sections prior to the experiment? What did those data show? How did the two sections differ during the 12th week of instruction? Why was a test administered at the end of week 12? What were the results of that test? Which section covered more material during class time in week 12? Was that apparent on the test? What do these results mean to you? What do they tell you about the potential impact of active and cooperative learning strategies on students?