Instructional Strategies: Advanced Organizer

Cooperative Learning

Unique & Necessary Elements:

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Positive Interdependence
Individual Accountability
Heterogeneous Membership
Shared Leadership
Task & Maintenance Emphasized
Teacher Observation/Intervention
Group Processing

What is the purpose of this method?

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Promote co-teaching & metacognition

Use student discussion and work to achieve goal, rather than sole teacher focus
Exposure to peer thoughts, opinions, processes, and ideas

When should this method be used, and why?

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This is useful when trying to attain a goal while providing students the freedom and ambiguity of how to achieve
said goal. Additionally, when a topic may require multiple, independent tasks, none of which specifically require
every student participate, and as such can be broken up into smaller tasks within a group. This allows a group to
achieve a goal in the fraction of a time an individual would.

How might it enhance the understanding of content being taught?

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Without explicit instructions, students are encouraged to develop personal inquiry. Furthermore, individual
accountability aids student understanding of work processes and how smaller concepts can become part of a
whole.

What are 4 examples of specific topics from your content that would work well with this method?
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Time-sensitive large-problem solving in Engineering. Students are presented with a non-discrete challenge and
asked to finish it within a set amount of time. This requires collaboration and division of labor to achieve said
task, but students are independent until completion, where in components become interdependent. A simplistic
example of this would be a four-section Lego set, that can have individual components built separately but must
be combined for success.
Business Communication: In Engineering firms, success depends on communication between multiple,
independent departments such as sales, manufacturing, design, and management. Face to face interaction is
key in conveying ideas properly. Having students unfamiliar with each other, given independent goals, then
asked to collaborate on a solution helps emphasize the complexity of these interactions.
Design Practicum: One of the key ideas behind Engineering Education is a summative design challenge, where
students display the entire course of the Engineering Design Process. This in itself is always a group,
collaborative learning project. Though time is unlimited, each student is acutely interdependent of one another
throughout the project, as compared to topic #1. And example of this would be designing a vehicle. No single
part of the design process can be wholly separated from another, thus students must interact prior to the end
much more frequently.
Lego Hotel. Outside of the classroom is a pre-built structure of Legos. Students in groups of 3-4 are allowed
to send one representative out of the classroom to look at the Lego hotel. They may not write anything down,
take pictures, or touch the structure. They may go outside to observe and return to the classroom as often as
they please. They may describe the structure to their fellow students, who will try to replicate it based on verbal

communication. After 10 minutes, every group must deconstruct their hotel, and given 2 minutes, reconstruct it
from memory or records taken by students inside the classroom. This collaborative effort is to emphasize the
skills of communication, observation, record-keeping, and division of labor.
Two advantages for using this model:
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More than one person is accountable

Promotes academic / professional socialization
Higher-order thinking skills

Two disadvantages for using this model:

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Students may not be sufficiently self-motivated

Group-think may overwhelm individual thought
Social conflict