Cooperative learning has always been a learning mode widely respected by teachers and students. It can help and supervise group members in the form of group cooperation. Sharan (2014) wrote in her article, “[w]ith time and practice students and teachers realize that the different interests, backgrounds, values, and abilities of group members enrich the class’ pool of resources for expanding knowledge” (pp. 806-807). This clearly shows that group cooperation has had an impact on teachers and students in many ways.
First of all, when we design a group assignment from the perspective of the teacher, the teacher needs to consider what effect the group assignment will bring to the students. For example, how should this group work be carried out? Is it done online or offline? Is the group assigned freely or by the teacher? These may all be factors that need to be considered. When the teacher assigns a group task in the classroom, the feedback and answers received are often better than the teacher directly imparting the answers to the students. Sharan (2014) also gave an example of this view, “[o]ften teachers experience an “aha” moment, when, after asking for 3 or 5 answers groups come up with 10 or more, some of which had not even occurred to the teacher”(p. 805). This proves the significance of group discussion, because each student’s different thinking and viewpoints will bring a lot of whimsical ideas to the group work, and many points of view are even more than the teacher thinks. More comprehensive.
From a student’s point of view, assignments that require group cooperation will also be of great help whether socially or in learning. In terms of social interaction, group work can exercise students how to communicate with group members, because group communication requires students to listen politely and give feedback to group members. The learning aspect is even more obvious. Group work can receive many different views and opinions among group members. Because each student’s knowledge reserve is different, compared to reading a large amount of literature at home, the group assignments completed in this way will be more efficient and interesting than those completed by one person.
As for Blueprint as our group assignment for this EDCI 335, our group also considered cooperative learning in the design of our course and arranged it into our course. In our course design, we have added group　project　 and group　presentation. The purpose of this is to allow the members of the group to divide the work more comprehensively to do their own research, and then communicate what they have learned, exchange their ideas, and finally write it into a group　project. And group 　presentation is to better introduce this group work to the classmates. It can include PPT, video and other auxiliary tools, so that each group can share the results of their respective groups and increase each other’s knowledge of our course.
Reference:
Sharan, Yael. (2014). Learning to cooperate for cooperative learning. Anales de PsicologĂa, 30(3), 802-807. https://dx.doi.org/10.6018/analesps.30.3.201211
