Cooperative

  ABOUT US/   WHAT IS COOPERATIVE LEARNING?/   INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COOPERATIVE LEARNING       What is Cooperative Learning? Cooperative learning is... An Overview Of Cooperative Learning David W Johnson and Roger T Johnson Without the cooperation of its members society cannot survive, and the society of man has survived because the cooperativeness of its members made survival possible….  It was not an advantageous individual here and there who did so, but the group.  In human societies the individuals who are most likely to survive are those who are best enabled to do so by their group. (Ashley Montagu, 1965) How students interact with each another is a neglected aspect of instruction.  Much training time is devoted to helping teachers arrange appropriate interactions between students and materials (i.e., textbooks, curriculum programs) and some time is spent on how teachers should interact with students, but how students should interact with one another is relatively ignored.  It should not be.  How teachers structure student-student interaction patterns has a lot to say about how well students learn, how they feel about school and the teacher, how they feel about each other, and how much self-esteem they have. In the mid-1960s, cooperative learning was relatively unknown and largely ignored by educators.  Elementary, secondary, and university teaching was dominated by competitive and individualistic learning.  Cultural resistance to cooperative learning was based on social Darwinism, with its premise that students must be taught to survive in a “dog-eat-dog” world, and the myth of “rugged individualism” underlying the use of individualistic learning.  While competition dominated educational thought, it was being challenged by individualistic learning largely based on B. F. Skinner’s work on programmed learning and behavioral modification.  Educational practices and thought, however, have changed.  Cooperative learning is now an accepted and often the preferred instructional procedure at all levels of education.  Cooperative learning is presently used in schools and universities in every part of the world, in every subject area, and with every age student.  It is difficult to find a text on instructional methods, a teacher’s journal, or instructional materials that do not discuss cooperative learning.  Materials on cooperative learning have been translated into dozens of languages.  Cooperative learning is now an accepted and highly recommended instructional procedure. Definition of Cooperative Learning Students’ learning goals may be structured to promote cooperative, competitive, or individualistic efforts.  In every classroom, instructional activities are aimed at accomplishing goals and are conducted under a goal structure.  A learning goal is a desired future state of demonstrating competence or mastery in the subject area being studied.  The goal structure specifies the ways in which students will interact with each other and the teacher during the instructional session.  Each goal structure has its place (Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 1999).  In the ideal classroom, all students would learn how to work cooperatively with others, compete for fun and enjoyment, and work autonomously on their own.  The teacher decides which goal structure to implement within each lesson.  The most important goal structure, and the one that should be used the majority of the time in learning situations, is cooperation. Cooperation is working together to accomplish shared goals.  Within cooperative situations, individuals seek outcomes that are beneficial to themselves and beneficial to all other group members. Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning.  It may be contrasted with competitive (students work against each other to achieve an academic goal such as a grade of “A” that only one or a few students can attain) andindividualistic (students work by themselves to accomplish learning goals unrelated to those of the other students) learning.  In cooperative and individualistic learning, you evaluate student efforts on a criteria-referenced basis while in competitive learning you grade students on a norm-referenced basis.  While there are limitations on when and where you may use competitive and individualistic learning appropriately, you may structure any learning task in any subject area with any curriculum cooperatively. Theorizing on social interdependence began in the early 1900s, when one of the founders of the Gestalt School of Psychology, Kurt Koffka, proposed that groups were dynamic wholes in which the interdependence among members could vary.  One of his colleagues, Kurt Lewin refined Koffka’s notions in the 1920s and 1930s while stating that (a) the essence of a group is the interdependence among members (created by common goals) which results in the group being a “dynamic whole” so that a change in the state of any member or subgroup changes the state of any other member or subgroup, and (b) an intrinsic state of tension within group members motivates movement toward the accomplishment of the desired common goals.  For interdependence to exist, there must be more than one person or entity involved, and the persons or entities must have impact on each other in that a change in the state of one causes a change in the state of the others.  From the work of Lewin’s students and colleagues, such as Ovisankian, Lissner, Mahler, and Lewis, it may be concluded that it is the drive for goal accomplishment that motivates cooperative and competitive behavior. In the late 1940s, one of Lewin’s graduate students, Morton Deutsch, extended Lewin’s reasoning about social interdependence and formulated a theory of cooperation and competition (Deutsch, 1949, 1962).  Deutsch conceptualized three types of social interdependence–positive, negative, and none.  Deutsch’s basic premise was that the type of interdependence structured in a situation determines how individuals interact with each other which, in turn, largely determines outcomes.  Positive interdependence tends to result in promotive interaction, negative interdependence tends to result in oppositional or contrient interaction, and no interdependence results in an absence of interaction.  Depending on whether individuals promote or obstruct each other’s goal accomplishments, there is substitutability, cathexis, and inducibility.  The relationships between the type of social interdependence and the interaction pattern it elicits is assumed to be bidirectional.  Each may cause the other.  Deutsch’s theory has served as a major conceptual structure for this area of inquiry since 1949. Types Of Cooperative Learning Formal Cooperative Learning Formal cooperative learning consists of students working together, for one class period to several weeks, to achieve shared learning goals and complete jointly specific tasks and assignments (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 2008).  In formal cooperative learning groups the teachers’ role includes (see Figure 4): 1.  Making preinstructional decisions.  Teachers (a) formulate both academic and social skills objectives, (b) decide on the size of groups, (c) choose a method for assigning students to groups, (d) decide which roles to assign group members, (e) arrange the room, and (f) arrange the materials students need to complete the assignment.  In these preinstructional decisions, the social skills objectives specify the interpersonal and small group skills students are to learn.  By assigning students roles, role interdependence is established.  The way in which materials are distributed can create resource interdependence.  The arrangement of the room can create environmental interdependence and provide the teacher with easy access to observe each group, which increases individual accountability and provides data for group processing. 2.  Explaining the instructional task and cooperative structure.Teachers (a) explain the academic assignment to students, (b) explain the criteria for success, (c) structure positive interdependence, (d) structure individual accountability, (e) explain the behaviors (i.e., social skills) students are expected to use, and (f) emphasize intergroup cooperation (this eliminates the possibility of competition among students and extends positive goal interdependence to the class as a whole).  Teachers may also teach the concepts and strategies required to complete the assignment.  By explaining the social skills emphasized in the lesson, teachers operationalize (a) the social skill objectives of the lesson and (b) the interaction patterns (such as oral rehearsal and jointly building conceptual frameworks) teachers wish to create. 3.  Monitoring students’ learning and intervening to provide assistance in (a) completing the task successfully or (b) using the targeted interpersonal and group skills effectively.While conducting the lesson, teachers monitor each learning group and intervene when needed to improve taskwork and teamwork.  Monitoring the learning groups creates individual accountability; whenever a teacher observes a group, members tend to feel accountable to be constructive members.  In addition, teachers collect specific data on promotive interaction, the use of targeted social skills, and the engagement in the desired interaction patterns.  This data is used to intervene in groups and to guide group processing. 4.  Assessing students’ learning and helping students process how well their groups functioned.  Teachers (a) bring closure to the lesson, (b) assess and evaluate the quality and quantity of student achievement, (c) ensure students carefully discuss how effectively they worked together (i.e., process the effectiveness of their learning groups), (d) have students make a plan for improvement, and (e) have students celebrate the hard work of group members.  The assessment of student achievement highlights individual and group accountability (i.e., how well each student performed) and indicates whether the group achieved its goals (i.e., focusing on positive goal interdependence).  The group celebration is a form of reward interdependence.  The feedback received during group processing is aimed at improving the use of social skills and is a form of individual accountability.  Discussing the processes the group used to function, furthermore, emphasizes the continuous improvement of promotive interaction and the patterns of interaction need to maximize student learning and retention. Informal Cooperative Learning Informal cooperative learning consists of having students work together to achieve a joint learning goal in temporary, ad-hoc groups that last from a few minutes to one class period (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 2008).  During a lecture, demonstration, or film, informal cooperative learning can be used to focus student attention on the material to be learned, set a mood conducive to learning, help set expectations as to what will be covered in a class session, ensure that students cognitively process and rehearse the material being taught, summarize what was learned and precue the next session, and provide closure to an instructional session.  The teacher’s role for using informal cooperative learning to keep students more actively engaged intellectually entails having focused discussions before and after the lesson (i.e., bookends) and interspersing pair discussions throughout the lesson.  Two important aspects of using informal cooperative learning groups are to (a) make the task and the instructions explicit and precise and (b) require the groups to produce a specific product (such as a written answer).  The procedure is as follows. 1.  Introductory Focused Discussion:  Teachers assign students to pairs or triads and explain (a) the task of answering the questions in a four to five minute time period and (b) the positive goal interdependence of reaching consensus.  The discussion task is aimed at promoting advance organizing of what the students know about the topic to be presented and establishing expectations about what the lecture will cover.  Individual accountability is ensured by the small size of the group.  A basic interaction pattern of eliciting oral rehearsal, higher-level reasoning, and consensus building is required. 2.  Intermittent Focused Discussions:  Teachers divide the lecture into 10 to 15 minute segments.  This is about the length of time a motivated adult can concentrate on information being presented.  After each segment, students are asked to turn to the person next to them and work cooperatively in answering a question (specific enough so that students can answer it in about three minutes) that requires students to cognitively process the material just presented.  The procedure is: a.  Each student formulates his or her answer. b.  Students share their answer with their partner. c.  Students listen carefully to their partner’s answer. d.  The pairs create a new answer that is superior to each member’s initial formulation by integrating the two answers, building on each other’s thoughts, and synthesizing. The question may require students to: a.  Summarize the material just presented. b.  Give a reaction to the theory, concepts, or information presented. c.  Predict what is going to be presented next; hypothesize. d.  Solve a problem. e.  Relate material to past learning and integrate it into conceptual frameworks. f.  Resolve conceptual conflict created by presentation. Teachers should ensure that students are seeking to reach an agreement on the answers to the questions (i.e., ensure positive goal interdependence is established), not just share their ideas with each other.  Randomly choose two or three students to give 30 second summaries of their discussions.  Such individual accountabilityensures that the pairs take the tasks seriously and check each other to ensure that both are prepared to answer.  Periodically, the teacher should structure a discussion of how effectively the pairs are working together (i.e., group processing).  Group celebrations add reward interdependence to the pairs. 3.  Closure Focused Discussion:  Teachers give students an ending discussion task lasting four to five minutes.  The task requires students to summarize what they have learned from the lecture and integrate it into existing conceptual frameworks.  The task may also point students toward what the homework will cover or what will be presented in the next class session.  This provides closure to the lecture. Informal cooperative learning ensures students are actively involved in understanding what is being presented.  It also provides time for teachers to move around the class listening to what students are saying.  Listening to student discussions can give instructors direction and insight into how well students understand the concepts and material being as well as increase the individual accountability of participating in the discussions. Cooperative Base Groups Cooperative base groups are long-term, heterogeneous cooperative learning groups with stable membership (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 2008).  Members’ primary responsibilities are to (a) ensure all members are making good academic progress (i.e., positive goal interdependence) (b) hold each other accountable for striving to learn (i.e., individual accountability), and (c) provide each other with support, encouragement, and assistance in completing assignments (i.e., promotive interaction).  In order to ensure the base groups function effectively, periodically teachers should teach needed social skills and have the groups process how effectively they are functioning.  Typically, cooperative base groups are heterogeneous in membership (especially in terms of achievement motivation and task orientation), meet regularly (for example, daily or biweekly), and last for the duration of the class (a semester or year) or preferably for several years.  The agenda of the base group can include academic support tasks (such as ensuring all members have completed their homework and understand it or editing each other’s essays), personal support tasks (such as getting to know each other and helping each other solve nonacademic problems), routine tasks (such as taking attendance), and assessment tasks (such as checking each other’s understanding of the answers to test questions when the test is first taken individually and then retaken in the base group). The teacher’s role in using cooperative base groups is to (a) form heterogeneous groups of four (or three), (b) schedule a time when they will regularly meet (such as beginning and end of each class session or the beginning and end of each week), (c) create specific agendas with concrete tasks that provide a routine for base groups to follow when they meet, (d) ensure the five basic elements of effective cooperative groups are implemented, and (e) have students periodically process the effectiveness of their base groups. The longer a cooperative group exists, the more caring their relationships will tend to be, the greater the social support they will provide for each other, the more committed they will be to each other’s success, and the more influence members will have over each other.  Permanent cooperative base groups provide the arena in which caring and committed relationships can be created that provide the social support needed to improve attendance, personalize the educational experience, increase achievement, and improve the quality of school life. Integrated Use Of All Three Types Of Cooperative Learning These three types of cooperative learning may be used together (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 2008).  A typical class session may begin with a base group meeting, which is followed by a short lecture in which informal cooperative learning is used.  The lecture is followed by a formal cooperative learning lesson.  Near the end of the class session another short lecture may be delivered with the use of informal cooperative learning.  The class ends with a base group meeting. Basic Elements of Cooperation Not all groups are cooperative (Johnson & F. Johnson, 2009).  Placing people in the same room, seating them together, telling them they are a group, does not mean they will cooperate effectively.  To be cooperative, to reach the full potential of the group, five essential elements need to be carefully structured into the situation:  positive interdependence, individual and group accountability, promotive interaction, appropriate use of social skills, and group processing (Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2005).  Mastering the basic elements of cooperation allows teachers to: 1.  Take existing lessons, curricula, and courses and structure them cooperatively. 2.  Tailor cooperative learning lessons to unique instructional needs, circumstances, curricula, subject areas, and students. 3.  Diagnose the problems some students may have in working together and intervene to increase the effectiveness of the student learning groups. The first and most important element is positive interdependence.  Teachers must give a clear task and a group goal so students believe they “sink or swim together.”  Positive interdependenceexists when group members perceive that they are linked with each other in a way that one cannot succeed unless everyone succeeds.  If one fails, all fail.  Group members realize, therefore, that each person’s efforts benefit not only him- or herself, but all other group members as well.  Positive interdependence creates a commitment to other people’s success as well as one’s own and is the heart of cooperative learning.  If there is no positive interdependence, there is no cooperation. The second essential element of cooperative learning is individual and group accountability.  The group must be accountable for achieving its goals.  Each member must be accountable for contributing his or her share of the work (which ensures that no one “hitch-hikes” on the work of others).  The group has to be clear about its goals and be able to measure (a) its progress in achieving them and (b) the individual efforts of each of its members. Individual accountability exists when the performance of each individual student is assessed and the results are given back to the group and the individual in order to ascertain who needs more assistance, support, and encouragement in completing the assignment.  The purpose of cooperative learning groups is to make each member a stronger individual in his or her right.  Students learn together so that they can subsequently perform higher as individuals. The third essential component of cooperative learning is promotive interaction, preferably face-to-face. Promotive interactionoccurs when members share resources and help, support, encourage, and praise each other’s efforts to learn.  Cooperative learning groups are both an academic support system (every student has someone who is committed to helping him or her learn) and a personal support system (every student has someone who is committed to him or her as a person).  There are important cognitive activities and interpersonal dynamics that can only occur when students promote each other’s learning.  This includes orally explaining how to solve problems, discussing the nature of the concepts being learned, teaching one’s knowledge to classmates, and connecting present with past learning.  It is through promoting each other’s learning face-to-face that members become personally committed to each other as well as to their mutual goals. The fourth essential element of cooperative learning is teaching students the required interpersonal and small group skills.  In cooperative learning groups students are required to learn academic subject matter (taskwork) and also to learn the interpersonal and small group skills required to function as part of a group (teamwork).  Cooperative learning is inherently more complex than competitive or individualistic learning because students have to engage simultaneously in taskwork and teamwork.  Group members must know how to provide effective leadership, decision-making, trust-building, communication, and conflict-management, and be motivated to use the prerequisite skills.  Teachers have to teach teamwork skills just as purposefully and precisely as teachers do academic skills.  Since cooperation and conflict are inherently related, the procedures and skills for managing conflicts constructively are especially important for the long-term success of learning groups.  Procedures and strategies for teaching students social skills may be found in Johnson (2009) and Johnson and F. Johnson (2009). The fifth essential component of cooperative learning is group processing.  Group processing exists when group members discuss how well they are achieving their goals and maintaining effective working relationships.  Groups need to describe what member actions are helpful and unhelpful and make decisions about what behaviors to continue or change.  Continuous improvement of the process of learning results from the careful analysis of how members are working together. These five elements are essential to all cooperative systems, no matter what their size.  When international agreements are made and when international efforts to achieve mutual goals (such as environmental protection) occur, these five elements must be carefully implemented and maintained. The Validating Research Amount And Characteristics Of Research The study of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts is commonly recognized as one of the oldest fields of research in social psychology.  In the late 1800’s Triplett in the United States, Turner in England, and Mayer in Germany conducted a series of studies on the factors associated with competitive performance.  Since then over 750 studies have been conducted on the relative merits of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts and the conditions under which each is appropriate.  This is one of the largest bodies of research within psychology and education. An extensive literature search was conducted aimed at identifying all the available studies from published and nonpublished sources.  Seven-hundred-fifty-four studies contained enough data to compute an effect size (there are many studies from which an effect size could not be computed) (Johnson & Johnson, 1989).  The research on social interdependence, furthermore, has an external validity and a generalizability rarely found in the social sciences.  The more variations in places, people, and procedures the research can withstand and still yield the same findings, the more externally valid the conclusions.  The research has been conducted over twelve decades by many different researchers with markedly different theoretical and practical orientations working in different settings and countries.  A wide variety of research tasks, ways of structuring social interdependence, and measures of the dependent variables have been used.  Participants in the studies varied from ages three to post-college adults and have come from different economic classes and cultural backgrounds.  The studies were conducted with different durations, lasting from one session to 100 sessions or more.  Research on social interdependence has been conducted in numerous cultures in North America (with Caucasian, Black-American, Native-American, and Hispanic populations) and countries from North, Central, and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific Rim, and Africa.  The research on social interdependence includes both theoretical and demonstration studies conducted in educational, business, and social service organizations.  The diversity of these studies gives social interdependence theory wide generalizability and considerable external validity. Promotive, oppositional, and no interaction have differential effects on the outcomes of the situation (see Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2005).  The research has focused on numerous outcomes, which may be subsumed within the broad and interrelated categories of effort to achieve, quality of relationships, and psychological health (Johnson, 2003; Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2005) (see Table 1 and Figure 2).  Figure 1 shows the relationships among the outcomes. Table 1 Mean Effect Sizes For Impact Of Social Interdependence On Dependent Variables ConditionsAchievementInterpersonal AttractionSocial SupportSelf-Esteem Total Studies Coop vs. Comp0.670.670.620.58 Coop vs. Ind0.640.600.700.44 Comp vs. Ind0.300.08-0.13-0.23 High Quality Studies Coop vs. Comp0.880.820.830.67 Coop vs. Ind0.610.620.720.45 Comp vs. Ind0.070.27-0.13-0.25 Note:  Coop = Cooperation, Comp = Competition, Ind = Individualistic Reprinted By Permission From:  Johnson, D. W. & Johnson, R. (1989).  Cooperation and Competition:  Theory and Research.Edina, MN:  Interaction Book Company Effort To Achieve From Table 1 it may be seen that cooperation promotes considerable greater effort to achieve than do competitive or individualistic efforts.  Effort exerted to achieve includes such variables as achievement and productivity, long-term retention, on-task behavior, use of higher-level reasoning strategies, generation of new ideas and solutions, transfer of what is learned within one situation to another, intrinsic motivation, achievement motivation, continuing motivation to learn, and positive attitudes toward learning and school.  Overall, cooperation tends to promote higher achievement than competitive or individualistic efforts (effect-sizes = 0.67 and 0.64 respectively).  The impact of cooperative learning on achievement means that if schools wish to prepare students to take proficiency tests to meet local and state standards, the use of cooperative learning should dominate instructional practice. An important aspect of school life is engagement in learning.  One indication of engagement in learning is time on task.  Cooperators spent considerably more time on task than did competitors (effect size = 0.76) or students working individualistically (effect size = 1.17).  In addition, students working cooperatively tended to be more involved in activities and tasks, attach greater importance to success, and engage in more on-task behavior and less apathetic, off-task, disruptive behaviors.  Finally, cooperative experiences, compared with competitive and individualistic ones, have been found to promote more positive attitudes toward the task and the experience of working on the task (effect-sizes = 0.57 and 0.42 respectively). Quality Of Relationships Quality of relationships includes such variables as interpersonal attraction, liking, cohesion, esprit-de-corps, and social support.  The degree of emotional bonding that exists among students has a profound effect on students’ behavior.  The more positive the relationships among students and between students and faculty, the lower the absenteeism and dropout rates and the greater the commitment to group goals, feelings of personal responsibility to the group, willingness to take on difficult tasks, motivation and persistence in working toward goal achievement, satisfaction and morale, willingness to endure pain and frustration on behalf of the group, willingness to defend the group against external criticism or attack, willingness to listen to and be influenced by colleagues, commitment to each other’s professional growth and success, and productivity (Johnson & F. Johnson, 2009). There are over 175 studies that have investigated the relative impact of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts on quality of relationships and another 106 studies on social support (Johnson, 2003; Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2005).  As Table 2 shows, cooperation generally promotes greater interpersonal attraction among individuals than does competitive or individualistic efforts (effect sizes = 0.67 and 0.60 respectively).  Cooperative experiences tend to promote greater social support than does competitive (effect-size = 0.62) or individualistic (effect-size = 0.70) efforts.  Stronger effects are found for peer support than for superior (teacher) support.  The high-quality studies tend to have even more powerful effects. It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of these research results.  Friends are a developmental advantage (see Johnson, 2003; Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2005).  There is a close association between antisocial behavior and rejection by the normal peer group.  Rejected children tend to be deficient in a number of social-cognitive skills, including peer group entry, perception of peer group norms, response to provocation, and interpretation of prosocial interactions.  Among children referred to child guidance clinics, 30 to 75 percent (depending on age) are reported by their parents to experience peer difficulties.  Moreover, children referred for psychological treatment have fewer friends and less contact with them than nonreferred children, their friendships are significantly less stable over time, and their understanding of the reciprocities and intimacies involved in friendships is less mature.  Peer group acceptance and friendships may be built through the extensive use of cooperative learning. Psychological Health Asley Montagu (1966) was fond of saying that with few exceptions the solitary animal in any species is an abnormal creature.  Similarly, Karen Horney (1937) stated that the neurotic individual is someone who is inappropriately competitive and, therefore, unable to cooperate with others.  Montagu and Horney recognized that the essence of psychological health is the ability to develop and maintain cooperative relationships.  More specifically, psychological health is the ability (cognitive capacities, motivational orientations, and social skills) to build, maintain, and appropriately modify interdependent relationships with others to succeed in achieving goals (Johnson, 2003; Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2005).  People who are unable to do so often (a) become depressed, anxious, frustrated, and lonely, (b) tend to feel afraid, inadequate, helpless, hopeless, and isolated, and (c) rigidly cling to unproductive and ineffective ways of coping with adversity. With our students and colleagues, we have conducted a series of studies relating cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts and attitudes to various indices of psychological health (see Johnson, 2003; Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2005).  The samples studied included middle-class junior-high students, middle-class high school seniors, high-school age juvenile prisoners, adult prisoners, Olympic ice-hockey players, adult step-couples, and business executives in China.  The diversity of the samples studied and the variety of measures of psychological health provide considerable generalizability of the results of the studies.  A strong relationship was found between cooperativeness and psychological health, a mixed picture was found with competitiveness and psychological health, and a strong relationship was found between an individualistic orientation and psychological pathology. Finally, there is evidence that cooperation promotes more frequent use of higher level reasoning strategies than do competitive (effect size = 0.93) or individualistic (effect size = 0.97) efforts.  Similarly, cooperation tends to promote more accurate perspective taking than do competitive (effect size = 0.61) or individualistic (effect size = 0.44) efforts.  Thus, the more cooperative learning experiences students are involved in, the more mature their cognitive and moral decision making and the more they will tend to take other people’s perspectives in account when making decisions. Conclusions and Summary Teachers who wish to use cooperative learning should ideally base their classroom practices on theory validated by research.  The closer classroom practices are to validated theory, the more likely they will be effective.  When more directly practice is connected to theory, furthermore, the more likely practice will be refined, upgraded, and improved over the years.  There are, however, few classroom practices that are directly based on validated theory.  The close relationship between theory, research, and practice makes cooperative learning somewhat unique.  It also creates a set of issues for teachers using cooperative learning. The first issue is understanding the nature of social interdependence.  Social interdependence is created when goals are structured so that the accomplishment of a person’s goal is affected by others’ actions.  The interdependence may be positive (which results in individuals working cooperatively to achieve their mutual goals) or negative (which results in individuals competing to see who will achieve the goal).  The absence of interdependence indicates no connection between people’s attempts to achieve their goals.  In cooperative situations, students’ actions substitute for each other, students are inducible, and a positive cathexis is created toward other’s actions.  In competitive situations, the opposite psychological processes may be found.  The fundamental premise of social interdependence theory is that the way in which goals are structured determines how individuals interact, and those interaction patterns create outcomes.  Positive goal interdependence tends to result in promotive interaction, negative goal interdependence tends to result in oppositional interaction, and no interdependence tends to result in no interaction. The second issue is understanding the research validating social interdependence theory.  There are hundreds of studies indicating that cooperation, compared to competitive and individualistic efforts, tends to result in greater effort to achieve, more positive relationships, and greater psychological health.  The diversity of this research provides considerable generalizabiity to the findings. The third issue is to understand the five basic elements that make cooperation work.  There is nothing magical about putting students in groups.  Students can compete with groupmates, students can work individualistically while ignoring groupmates, or students can work cooperatively with groupmates.  In order to structure cooperative learning effectively, teachers need to understand how tostructure positive interdependence, individual accountability, promotive interaction, appropriate use of social skills, and group processing into learning situations. The fourth issue is to understand the flexibility and many faces of cooperative learning.  When the five basic elements may be effectively implemented in formal cooperative learning situations (formal cooperative learning may be used to structure most learning situations), informal cooperative learning situations (informal cooperative learning may be used to make didactic lessons cooperative), and cooperative base groups (which are used to personalize a class and the school).  Together they provide an integrated system for instructional organization and design (as well as classroom management).  When utilizing these three types of cooperative learning, any learning situations in any subject area with any age students and with any curriculum can be structured cooperatively. References Deutsch, M.  (1949).  A theory of cooperation and competition. Human Relations, 2, 129-152. Deutsch, M.  (1962).  Cooperation and trust: Some theoretical notes.  In M. Jones (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation, (pp. 275-319).  Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Horney, K.  (1937).  The neurotic personality of our time.  New York: Norton. Johnson, D. W.  (2003).  Social interdependence:  The interrelationships among theory, research, and practice.  American Psychologist, 58(11), 931-945. Johnson, D.W.  (2009).  Reaching out: Interpersonal effectivenessand self- actualization (10th ed.).  Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Johnson, D.W., & Johnson, F.  (2009).  Joining together: Group theory and group skills (10th ed.).  Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Johnson D. W., & Johnson, R.  (1989).  Cooperation and competition: Theory and research. Edina, MN: interaction Book Company. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1999). Learning together and alone: Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning (5th Ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Montagu, A.  (1966).  On being human.  New York:  Hawthorn. Keep in touch with the Cooperative Learning Institute Top of Form Name First Name Last Name Email Address * Bottom of Form Latest Tweets Banner images provided by Classic Sailing or GollyGforce, for demo purposes only. Powered by Squarespace Welcome to Cooperative and Collaborative Learning. In this session we'll focus specifically on how this technique for using small, cooperative groups in education can help improve learning in your class. Then you can proceed from CONCEPT TO CLASSROOM as you begin to apply new ideas to your lessons. What are cooperative and collaborative learning? How do cooperative and collaborative learning differ from the traditional approach? How have cooperative and collaborative learning developed since they became popular? What are the benefits of cooperative and collaborative learning? What are some critical perspectives? How can I use cooperative and collaborative learning in conjunction with other educational techniques? What are cooperative and collaborative learning? Collaborative learning is a method of teaching and learning in which students team together to explore a significant question or create a meaningful project. A group of students discussing a lecture or students from different schools working together over the Internet on a shared assignment are both examples of collaborative learning. Cooperative learning, which will be the primary focus of this workshop, is a specific kind of collaborative learning. In cooperative learning, students work together in small groups on a structured activity. They are individually accountable for their work, and the work of the group as a whole is also assessed. Cooperative groups work face-to-face and learn to work as a team. In small groups, students can share strengths and also develop their weaker skills. They develop their interpersonal skills. They learn to deal with conflict. When cooperative groups are guided by clear objectives, students engage in numerous activities that improve their understanding of subjects explored. In order to create an environment in which cooperative learning can take place, three things are necessary. First, students need to feel safe, but also challenged. Second, groups need to be small enough that everyone can contribute. Third, the task students work together on must be clearly defined. The cooperative and collaborative learning techniques presented here should help make this possible for teachers. Also, in cooperative learning small groups provide a place where: learners actively participate; teachers become learners at times, and learners sometimes teach; respect is given to every member; projects and questions interest and challenge students; diversity is celebrated, and all contributions are valued; students learn skills for resolving conflicts when they arise; members draw upon their past experience and knowledge; goals are clearly identified and used as a guide; research tools such as Internet access are made available; students are invested in their own learning. For more detailed descriptions of cooperative and collaborative learning, check out the books, articles, and Web sites listed on our Resources page. How do cooperative and collaborative learning differ from the traditional approach? Cooperative and collaborative learning differ from traditional teaching approaches because students work together rather than compete with each other individually. Collaborative learning can take place any time students work together -- for example, when they help each other with homework. Cooperative learning takes place when students work together in the same place on a structured project in a small group. Mixed-skill groups can be especially helpful to students in developing their social abilities. The skills needed to work together in groups are quite distinct from those used to succeed in writing a paper on one's own or completing most homework or "seatwork" assignments. In a world where being a "team player" is often a key part of business success, cooperative learning is a very useful and relevant tool. Because it is just one of a set of tools, however, it can easily be integrated into a class that uses multiple approaches. For some assignments individual work may be most efficient, while for others cooperative groups work best. Research suggests that cooperative and collaborative learning bring positive results such as deeper understanding of content, increased overall achievement in grades, improved self-esteem, and higher motivation to remain on task. Cooperative learning helps students become actively and constructively involved in content, to take ownership of their own learning, and to resolve group conflicts and improve teamwork skills. How have cooperative and collaborative learning developed since they became popular? Over the past twenty-five years, the use of small-group learning has greatly increased. Informal collaborative projects have grown into structured, cooperative group work. Cooperative learning became especially popular in the early 1980s and has matured and evolved since. One evolving aspect of cooperative and collaborative learning involves how the educational community approaches the composition of the small groups. Debates still occur on this topic. Researchers disagree mainly about whether to group students according to their ability, or to mix them so that stronger students can help the weaker ones learn and themselves learn from the experience of tutoring. Some researchers, such as Mills 1 and Durden (1992), suggest that gifted students are held back when grouped with weaker students. More researchers support diversity in small groups, however. Radencich and McKay (1995) conclude that grouping by ability does not usually benefit overall achievement and can lead to inequalities of achievement. With good arguments on both sides, most teachers make choices based on their objectives. 1.  Or, they simply alternate. Sometimes they group according to the strengths or interests of students, and other times they mix it up so that students can learn to work with different types of people. Just as experts differ on the make-up of groups, they also debate about the most effective size for small groups. According to Slavin 2(1987), having two or three members per group produces higher achievement than groups with four or more members. Antil et al. (1997) conclude that most teachers prefer pairs and small groups of three and four. Elbaum et al. (1997) suggest that we have dialogues with students about their preferences for group composition and expected outcomes. And Fidler (1999) discusses the value of reflecting in order to correct errors we make in group assignments. Through many mistakes, Fidler learned how to refine the composition of his groups. 2.  As we work through some examples of cooperative learning, you will learn how to devise groups that work best for particular assignments. Science teacher Janet Torkel at Brooklyn's P.S. 200 discusses how collaboration between teachers helps her students learn better. Seeing teachers working together helps reinforce the students' own collaborative work. Most recently, new technologies have added an exciting new dimension to collaborative and cooperative learning. With the Internet, collaboration can occur without regard to distance or time barriers: e-mails can be sent at students' or teachers' convenience to practically anywhere around the world, and the recipient can reply when he or she has time. Students can work together to create Web pages or find and share data gleaned from the Net. There is software that can be used with school computer networks to allow students in different classrooms to work together simultaneously or a group of students to collaborate on projects like desktop publishing. For more on using technology with cooperative and collaborative learning, see the topic "How can technology be used with cooperative and collaborative learning?" in the "Exploration"section of this workshop. What are the benefits of cooperative and collaborative learning? Benefits from small-group learning in a collaborative environment include: Celebration of diversity. Students learn to work with all types of people. During small-group interactions, they find many opportunities to reflect upon and reply to the diverse responses fellow learners bring to the questions raised. Small groups also allow students to add their perspectives to an issue based on their cultural differences. This exchange inevitably helps students to better understand other cultures and points of view. Acknowledgment of individual differences. When questions are raised, different students will have a variety of responses. Each of these can help the group create a product that reflects a wide range of perspectives and is thus more complete and comprehensive. Interpersonal development. Students learn to relate to their peers and other learners as they work together in group enterprises. This can be especially helpful for students who have difficulty with social skills. They can benefit from structured interactions with others. Actively involving students in learning. Each member has opportunities to contribute in small groups. Students are apt to take more ownership of their material and to think critically about related issues when they work as a team. More opportunities for personal feedback. Because there are more exchanges among students in small groups, your students receive more personal feedback about their ideas and responses. This feedback is often not possible in large-group instruction, in which one or two students exchange ideas and the rest of the class listens. Part 1 of 2 Part 2 of 2 In Part 1 of this video clip, Kathryn Mitchell Pierce, who teaches grades one through three in Clayton, Missouri, talks about adjusting the make-up of cooperative groups. In Part 2, she discusses how even shy students can blossom when assigned to the right kind of group. Beneficial, cooperative-learning situations are not easy to set up. In many situations, particularly those in which people must work together on a problem, conflicts prevent learning. As a result, cooperative learning requires teaching kids to work well with others by resolving these inevitable conflicts. In the next section, we will present specific techniques for dealing with group conflicts. How can I use cooperative and collaborative learning in conjunction with other educational techniques? Since cooperative-learning techniques revolve around the use of a particular tool -- small groups -- they can be used with almost any other educational strategy. Many of the other teaching techniques detailed in previous workshops include small-group learning activities. The cooperative-learning techniques described here will help you and your students make the best use of these small-group activities. Some types of cooperative learning (like those demonstrated in this workshop) have been developed in concert with the theory of multiple intelligences, so they work very readily with this strategy. In small groups, students can share their strengths and weaknesses and use the group activities to develop a variety of their intelligences. Cooperative activities involve the construction of new ideas based on personal and shared foundations of past experiences and understandings -- so they naturally apply some of the principles of constructivism. Learners also investigate significant, real-world problems through good explorative questions, and as a result these groups can easily be used for aninquiry-based approach. They can also help students meet national, state, or local standards. Cooperative and collaborative activities can have many different objectives, ranging from mastery of basic skills to higher-order thinking. Because the specifics of a cooperative-learning project depend on the objectives of the particular teacher, the teacher can easily orient the project toward meeting these standards. What are the challenges of group work and how can I address them? Unfortunately, groups can easily end up being less, rather than more, than the sum of their parts. Why is this? In this section, we consider the hazards of group projects and strategies instructors can use to avoid or mitigate them. Find other strategies and examples here or contact the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence for help. For students, common challenges of group work include: Coordination costs Motivation costs Intellectual costs For instructors, common challenges involve: Allocating time Teaching process skills Assessing process as well as product Assessing individual as well as group learning Challenges for students Coordination costs represent time and energy that group work consumes that individual work does not, including the time it takes to coordinate schedules, arrange meetings, meet, correspond, make decisions collectively, integrate the contributions of group members, etc. The time spent on each of these tasks may not be great, but together they are significant. Coordination costs can’t be eliminated, nor should they be: after all, coordinating the efforts of multiple team members is an important skill. However, if coordination costs are excessive or are not factored into the structure of group assignments, groups tend to miss deadlines, their work is poorly integrated, motivation suffers, and creativity declines. Instructors should note that coordination costs increase with: Group size: The more people in the group, the more schedules to accommodate, parts to delegate, opinions to consider, pieces to integrate, etc. Smaller groups have lower coordination costs. Task interdependence: Tasks in which group members are highly reliant on one another at all stages tend to have higher coordination costs than tasks that allow students to “divide and conquer”, though they may not satisfy the same collaborative goals. Heterogeneity: Heterogeneity of group members tends to raises coordination costs, especially if there are language issues to contend with, cultural differences to bridge, and disparate skills to integrate. However, since diversity of perspectives is one of the principle advantages of groups, this should not necessarily be avoided. Strategies: To help reduce or mitigate coordination costs: Keep groups small. Designate some class time for group meetings. Use group resumes or skills inventories to help teams delegate subtasks. Assign roles (e.g., group leader, scheduler) or encourage students to do so. Point students to digital tools that facilitate remote and/or asynchronous meetings. Warn students about time-consuming stages and tasks. Actively build communication and conflict resolution skills. Designate time in the project schedule for the group to integrate parts. Motivation costs refers to the adverse effect on student motivation of working in groups, which often involves one or more of these phenomena: Free riding occurs when one or more group members leave most or all of the work to a few, more diligent, members. Free riding – if not addressed proactively – tends to erode the long-term motivation of hard-working students. Social loafing describes the tendency of group members to exert less effort than they can or should because of the reduced sense of accountability (think of how many people don’t bother to vote, figuring that someone else will do it.) Social loafing lowers group productivity. Conflict within groups can erode morale and cause members to withdraw. It can be subtle or pronounced, and can (but isn’t always) the cause and result of free riding. Conflict – if not effectively addressed – can leave group members with a deeply jaundiced view of teams. Strategies: To address both preexisting and potential motivation problems: Explain why working in groups is worth the frustration. Establish clear expectations for group members, by setting ground rules and/or using team contracts. Increase individual accountability by combining group assessments with individual assessments.  Teach conflict-resolution skills and reinforce them by role-playing responses to hypothetical team conflict scenarios.  Assess group processes via periodic process reports, self-evaluations, and peer evaluations. Intellectual costs refer to characteristics of group behavior that can reduce creativity and productivity. These include: Groupthink: the tendency of groups to conform to a perceived majority view.  Escalation of commitment: the tendency of groups to become more committed to their plans and strategies – even ineffective ones – over time.  Transparency illusion: the tendency of group members to believe their thoughts, attitudes and reasons are more obvious to others than is actually the case. Common information effect: the tendency of groups to focus on information all members share and ignore unique information, however relevant. Strategies: To reduce intellectual costs and increase the creativity and productivity of groups: Precede group brainstorming with a period of individual brainstorming (sometimes called “nominal group technique”). This forestalls groupthink and helps the group generate and consider more different ideas. Encourage group members to reflect on and highlight their contributions in periodic self-evaluations.  Create structured opportunities at the halfway point of projects to allow students to reevaluate and revise their strategies and approaches. Assign roles to group members that reduce conformity and push the group intellectually (devil’s advocate, doubter, the Fool). Challenges for instructors While group assignments have benefits for instructors, they also have complexities that instructors should consider carefully, for example in these areas: Allocating time: While group assignments may save instructors time in some areas (e.g., grading final projects), they may add time in other areas (e.g., time needed up front to identify appropriate project topics, contact external clients, compose student groups; time during the semester to meet with and monitor student groups; time at the end of the semester to ascertain the contributions of individual team members.) Teaching process skills: Functioning effectively in teams requires students to develop strong communication, coordination, and conflict resolution skills, which not all instructors feel qualified to teach. Many instructors are also reluctant to devote class time to reinforcing these skills and may be uncomfortable dealing with the interpersonal issues that can arise in groups. In other words, dealing proactively with team dynamics may push some instructors out of their comfort zone. Assessing process as well as product: Assessing teamwork skills and group dynamics (i.e., process) can be far trickier than assessing a team’s work (i.e., product). Effective evaluation of process requires thoughtful consideration of learning objectives and a combination of assessment approaches. This creates layers of complexity that instructors may not anticipate. Assessing individual as well as group learning: Group grades can hide significant differences in learning, yet teasing out which team members did and did not contribute to the group or learn the lessons of the assignment can be difficult. Once again, this adds complexity to group projects that instructors often underestimate.  Find effective strategies to help faculty address these issues in the design of effective group projects. What are best practices for designing group projects? What is true for individual assignments holds true for group assignments: it is important to clearly articulate your objectives, explicitly define the task, clarify your expectations, model high-quality work, and communicate performance criteria. But group work has complexities above and beyond individual work. To ensure a positive outcome, try some of these effective practices (adapted from Johnson, Johnson & Smith, 1991) or come talk to us at the Eberly Center. Create interdependence Devote time specifically to teamwork skills Build in individual accountability Create interdependence While some instructors don’t mind if students divvy up tasks and work separately, others expect a higher degree of collaboration. If collaboration is your goal, structure the project so that students are dependent on one another. Here are a few ways to create interdependence: Strategy Example Ensure projects are sufficiently complex that students must draw on one another’s knowledge and skills.  In one course on game design, group assignments require students to create playable games that incorporate technical (e.g., programming) and design skills. To complete the assignment successfully, students from different disciplines must draw on one another’s strengths. Create shared goals that can only be met through collaboration. In one engineering course, teams compete against one another to design a boat (assessed on various dimensions such as stability and speed) by applying engineering principles and working within budgetary and material constraints. The fun and intensity of a public competition encourages the team to work closely together to create the best design possible. Limit resources to compel students to share critical information and materials. In a short-term project for an architectural design course, the instructor provides student groups with a set of materials (e.g., tape, cardboard, string) and assigns them the task of building a structure that conforms to particular design parameters using only these materials. Because students have limited resources, they cannot divide tasks but must strategize and work together. Assign roles(.doc) within the group that will help facilitate collaboration. In a semester-long research project for a history course, the instructor assigns students distinct roles within their groups: one student is responsible for initiating and sustaining communication with the rest of the group, another with coordinating schedules and organizing meetings, another with recording ideas generated and decisions made at meetings, and a fourth with keeping the group on task and cracking the whip when deadlines are approaching. The instructor rotates students through these roles, so that they each get practice performing each function. Devote time specifically to teamwork skills Don’t assume students already know how to work in groups! While most students have worked on group projects before, they still may not have developed effective teamwork skills. By the same token, the teamwork skills they learned in one context (say on a soccer team or in a theatrical production) may not be directly applicable to another (e.g., a design project involving an external client.) To work successfully in groups, students need to learn how to work with others to do things they might only know how to do individually, for example to... assess the nature and difficulty of a task break the task down into steps or stages plan a strategy manage time Students also need to know how to handle issues that only arise in groups, for example, to: explain their ideas to others listen to alternative ideas and perspectives reach consensus delegate responsibilities coordinate efforts resolve conflicts integrate the contributions of multiple team members Here are a few things you can do both to help students develop these skills and to see their value in professional life. Strategy Example Emphasize the practical importance of strong teamwork skills. Explain the value of teamwork skills in (and outside) the workplace by offering real-world examples of how teams function and illustrating what can go wrong when teamwork skills are weak. One instructor asks students to generate a list of skills they believe employers look for. Often students answer this question with a set of domain-specific skills, such as drafting or computer programming. The instructor then contrasts their answers with the answers given by actual employers, who often focus on domain-general process skills such as “the ability to communicate clearly” and “the ability to work with others”. This activity serves to reinforce the process goals for group work assignments. Address negative or inaccurate preconceptions about group work. If students haven’t taken group projects seriously in previous courses or if their experiences were negative, it may affect how they approach assignments in your course. Consider asking them to list positive and negative aspects of groups based on their previous experiences and then to brainstorm strategies for preventing or mitigating potentially negative aspects of group work. Also explain how you have structured your assignment to minimize problems (such as the free-rider phenomenon) they may have encountered in the past. Provide structure and guidance to help students plan. Model the process of planning for a complex task by explaining how you would approach a similar task. Build time into the project schedule that is specifically devoted to planning. Set interim deadlines. Break the project down into steps or stages and set deadlines for interim deliverables, e.g., a project proposal, timeline, bibliography, first draft. In addition to setting interim deadlines, give students a rough sense of how long various steps of the project are likely to take and warn them about matters they will need to attend to earlier than they might expect. Establish ground rules. Create ground rules for group behavior or ask students to do so themselves. Group ground rules can include things such as: return e-mails from group members within 24 hours; come to meetings on time and prepared; meet deadlines; listen to what your teammates have to say; respond to one another’s comments politely but honestly; be constructive; criticize ideas, not people. You might then ask students to formally agree to these ground rules by signing a group learning contract (Barkley, Cross & Major, 2005). Find sample team contracts here… Teach and reinforce conflict-resolution skills. Disagreements within groups can provide valuable opportunities for students to develop both better teamwork skills and better end products (Thompson, 2004). But conflict can also erode motivation. To help students handle disagreements and tensions productively, provide language they can use to voice objections and preferences constructively and reinforce listening skills. Structured role-playing can also be helpful: present students with a hypothetical source of tension (e.g., a domineering personality, a slacker, cultural differences in communication style) before real tensions arise and then ask them to work toward a resolution, improvising dialogue and actions. Role-playing conflict-resolution in advance can help students recognize similar issues when they arise and respond to them creatively and appropriately. Alert students to common pitfalls. Point out potential pitfalls of team projects and/or your particular assignment. Common pitfalls may include underestimating the amount of time required to schedule meetings, coordinating access to labs, computer clusters, or studio space, getting research materials from Interlibrary Loan, obtaining IRB permission for research interviews, mailing reports to external clients, preparing presentations, revising reports, etc. Foster metacognitive skills. Encourage students to assess their own strengths and weaknesses (e.g., tendency to procrastinate, openness to criticism, strong oral communication skills) and to consider how these traits could potentially affect group dynamics. One instructor gives students a self-assessment survey and lets group members compare their answers. Find sample self-assessments here... He then asks: What mechanisms could your group put in place to capitalize on these strengths and compensate for these weaknesses? Answers generated include setting hard deadlines (if a number of group members are procrastinators), developing a system of turn-taking to make sure that everyone has the chance to speak (if there are shy group members), using flow charts to represent the task (for group members with a visual orientation or weak language skills), etc. Incorporate process assessments. Ask students to periodically evaluate their own or others’ contributions to the group in relation to a set of process goals, such as respectfully listening to and considering opposing views or a minority opinion, effectively managing conflict around differences in ideas or approaches, keeping the group on track during and between meetings, promptness in meeting deadlines, etc. Then give groups a chance to generate strategies for improving their group processes. Build in individual accountability It is possible for a student to work hard in a group and yet fail to understand crucial aspects of the project. In order to gauge whether individual students have met your criteria for understanding and mastery, it is important to structure individual accountability into your group work assignments. In other words, in addition to evaluating the work of the group as a whole, ask individual group members to demonstrate their learning via quizzes, independent write-ups, weekly journal entries, etc. Not only does this help you monitor student learning, it helps to prevent the “free-rider” phenomenon. Students are considerably less likely to leave all the work to more responsible classmates if they know their individual performance will affect their grade. To create individual accountability, some instructors combine a group project with an individual quiz on relevant material. Others base part of the total project grade on a group product (e.g., report, presentation, design, paper) and part on an individual submission. The individual portion might consist of a summary of the group’s decision-making process, a synthesis of lessons learned, a description of the individual student’s contributions to the group, etc. One statistics instructor assigns student groups the task of presenting, synthesizing, and evaluating a set of articles on a particular topic. It is important to him that every group member have a firm grasp of the complete set of readings, even if they individually only present one or two. Thus, he builds individual accountability into the project by warning students in advance that he will ask each of them questions about the readings they did not present. This helps to ensure that students read the full set of articles, and not just the readings they present. References Barkley, E.F., Cross, K.P., and Major, C.H. (2005). Collaborative learning techniques: A handbook for college faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R., & Smith, K. (1998). Active learning: Cooperation in the college classroom. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company. Thompson, L.L. (2004). Making the team: A guide for managers. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc. Challenges and Opportunities of Community Engaged Teaching By Joe Bandy, Assistant Director, CFT For experienced and inexperienced educators alike, community engaged teaching can present unique and sometimes difficult challenges for which many are not equipped.  However, when these challenges are met and overcome, community engaged teaching allows students, faculty, and communities to experience profound growth. Time commitment Ensuring positive community impact Ensuring Student Learning Time Commitment Of the many concerns that educators express about community engaged teaching and research, possibly the most frequent is that it takes a lot of precious time.  Indeed, it takes significant amounts of time to develop a productive working relationship with a community partner, to design projects that meet both learning and community goals, to manage the logistics of the projects as they unfold, to engage students in special skills training, and to reflect on the meaningfulness of projects with students. Possible Solutions: Centers for Teaching and Learning Centers for teaching and learning offer many resources to assist you in efficiently planning community-based courses that have a high impact on students and the community.  Because each course and community project can be unique, the most useful service is usually a one-on-one consultation.  However, we also offer workshops on community engaged teaching and we host a working group on these pedagogies for experienced faculty.  Here at Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching, the staff has extensive experience with every phase of course planning and thus can help to make your community-based teaching successful.  Please call the CFT or write Joe Bandy to schedule an appointment. Public Service Offices Rely on community service offices to bridge the gap between campus and community.  Your fellow educators and your institution’s public service centers can help you to develop meaningful partnerships more efficiently.  Indeed, peers in your department and the staff of organizations such as Vanderbilt’s Office of Active Citizenship and Service (OACS) or the Center for Nashville Studies may have established community partners and project ideas to suit a wide variety of learning objectives.  They therefore can help make the planning much easier and help establish a positive working relationship between you and your community partner.  They also may be able to assist with services such as campus vans or other logistical necessities that your course may require. Community Partnership Databases Increasingly, many educational institutions are developing online databases that faculty, students, and community organizations can use to register needs or ideas and develop partnerships.  At Vanderbilt, multiple sites may be of service as you identify possible community partners: Office of Active Citizenship and Service (OACS) Office of Community, Neighborhood, and Government Relations Center for Community Studies and its Matching Program Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (VICTR) Research Match Program Community Resources Likewise, your local community or government may have organizations that facilitate civic action, from volunteerism to campus partnerships.  They are likely to know of a variety of community projects that might fit with your research or teaching interests.  Please see the Vanderbilt and Community Resources links below for more information. Ensuring Positive Community Impact What if your community-based project with students turns out to be of limited impact in the community?  For many educators this is a significant concern since we would like to have our community partnerships be mutually beneficial and because we want our students to feel effective in their work. Possible Solutions: Assessing Community Need To ensure a project has significant impact for a community, it is important to address a community’s most urgent needs.  Therefore it is important to rely upon well-respected community leaders and organizations for an assessment of its needs and for greater background on the issues the community faces.  This should be supplemented with academic or government research that may be available about the community.  From these needs assessments, community goals should become clearer, which in turn will allow project ideas to emerge more easily.  Again, public service offices or experienced faculty may have done this work already, so please rely upon them. Building Trust In many campus-community, or “town-gown,” relationships there are histories of miscommunication, neglect, distrust, and even conflict.  It is helpful to be aware of these histories and the dilemmas they pose for new campus-community partnerships as you enter into dialogue with community members.  Even when there are not histories of conflict, there can be an absence of communication that may cause each side to suffer misunderstandings about the other.  Open, supportive communications are therefore essential to fostering mutually beneficial partnerships.  Also helpful are public conferences, guest lectures, community talks, campus or community tours, and other exchanges that serve to build understanding and trust.  Lastly, it is important to rely upon those bridge-builders between your campus and the community, whether they are community members with ties to the campus or staff and faculty who have been active locally. Creative and Flexible Project Design When designing a project with a community partner it is important to balance both community engagement and student learning goals equitably.  This might involve some creativity and flexibility on both sides.  Educators need to be flexible in adapting the learning goals of a course to the practical needs of a community partner.  Likewise, community partners may need to be flexible in choosing projects that will provide meaningful learning experiences for students.  Open and supportive communication, mutual understanding, and trust are invaluable in this process. Setting Realistic Project Goals In defining a mutually beneficial project, it is important to set learning and community goals that are manageable for your students within the time frame of your course.  Further, it is important to communicate these goals clearly to your students and ensure they have a clear sense of what will be expected of them at every step in the course. Managing Community Expectations Community partners can be excited to have students working with them on new and valued projects, and they may have high hopes about what they can accomplish.  While this enthusiasm is important for developing a good partnership, it is important to ensure your partner knows exactly what capacities your students do and do not have, and to set realistic expectations for project goals. Ensuring Continuity Community needs often exceed the limitations of one project and the semester time frame in which most educators teach.  Therefore, it is helpful for the community and educators to develop lasting partnerships.  Not only do lasting partnerships yield multiple projects over time that can result in a cumulative impact on the community, but they also allow for the trust and mutual understanding that ease future project planning and success.   If these partnerships can be established between the community and entire departments, programs, or institutions, community needs can be addressed across multiple educators and courses over time.  This ensures even greater community impact and partnerships that are less vulnerable to the career shifts of individual faculty. Adhering to IRB Guidelines If your project involves student research with human subjects from the community, it is imperative to have all members of the research project adhere to Vanderbilt University’s Human Research Protection Program policies and procedures.  These ensure respect and just treatment for community members and may provided useful teaching moments with students about ethical dimensions of community research. Assessing Impacts As in any form of instruction, it is imperative to evaluate community-based teaching and its impact.  While educators typically gather student ratings of a course, there often is no such mechanism for community partner evaluation.  Community partner evaluations can be done in the midst of a project for the purposes of implementing any mid-course corrections, but they also should be done once the project is finished to determine its final impact.  This can be in the form of a final written evaluation that an educator asks them to submit, one with specific questions regarding every phase of the project – from the usefulness of project design, to student conduct, to the helpfulness of the final results.  If there is more than one partner and they have online access, using an online survey service such as Survey Monkey can ensure greater anonymity and openness. Additional Resources Learn and Serve’s “Building Effective Partnerships in Service-Learning”   Ensuring Student Learning Another common worry is that students will not be prepared well enough to complete a community-based project successfully and that this will limit the learning experience as well as fail in helping their community partner.  While failure can happen in any teaching setting, the obligations educators and students may feel to community partners can make that prospect more worrisome.  It is therefore important to ensure students have all the preparation necessary to succeed in their projects and to benefit from the learning experience that community engagement provides. Possible Solutions: Content For the greatest synergy between learning and service tasks, and for the greatest chance of project success, it is important to weave the project thoroughly into the content of the class.  It is therefore helpful to provide students with course content – readings, lectures, discussions – that develop their knowledge of community issues and their understanding of relevant theoretical perspectives.  When possible, it is helpful to have community partners suggest useful readings, provide a guest lecture, or participate in class dialogue. Orientation to the Community Partner Students may benefit from an orientation to the project and the community with their community partner, whether it is off campus or in a guest lecture.  This helps to provide students with an introduction to the community and the project goals, and better understand the synergies that exist between service and learning goals.  It also can help the students to make the community partner less abstract and enhance their sense of accountability to the project, serving as an important motivation for student performance throughout the course. Skills Training If students require skills training that will be helpful in the project – such as interviewing or film-making, just to name two – it is important to set aside time for this inside or outside of class.  In these trainings it may be helpful to rely upon colleagues or support staff who have the relevant skills. Ethics Training It is always crucial to ensure students do no harm to their partners or those they represent.  This may require special readings and discussions about potential ethical problems associated with your project and how students should avoid them.  When possible, it is useful to have community partners participate in these discussions to help sensitize and inform students, and to enhance mutual trust. Logistical Support Students may have the motivation and knowledge to complete a successful project, but if logistical difficulties such as scheduling, IRB processes, transportation, or communications mount, success is less likely.  Therefore it is important to provide students with the resources they need and that they are using them effectively. Assignments To ensure students are progressing towards the project’s learning and service goals, it is important to assign relevant readings and assess their progress through tests, reports, oral presentations, or other assignments.  If the project is substantial, it is helpful to assign its component pieces throughout the course so that students gradually build towards the final result with important comments and corrections along the way. What if Projects Don’t Succeed? What if students cannot complete the project successfully and thus fail their community partner?  If one has designed the project with realistic expectations, adequate student preparation, open communications with the community partner, and a thorough work schedule, it is unlikely that students will have nothing meaningful to share with the partner.  Indeed, because students and faculty feel accountable to the community partner, it is rare to see community-based projects yield no results whatsoever. What is more likely is one of two scenarios: Students and community partners may encounter unforeseen obstacles that limit the project outcome in some way. The project’s results, especially those projects that involve original research, are not what the students or the partner expected. In either of these cases it is important to see these as teaching moments, both for students and for the community partner.  Research or service projects conducted in the context of real world constraints may indeed surface unforeseen issues that can be the subject of intensive reflection and critical analysis.  When students have the opportunity to problem solve collaboratively to address these issues, they may learn even more about the complexities of real world contexts beyond abstract course content as well as valuable leadership skills of adaptation.  However, for these moments to have the greatest educational and community impact, educators need to have the courage to teach in the context of real world complexities and challenges. Quality Circles in the Community College. ERIC Digest. Community colleges today face the challenge of providing quality education under tight budgetary constraints. A tool that may help community colleges meet this challenge is the quality circle, a management technique borrowed from Japanese industry that is now gaining popularity among American managers. This ERIC Digest draws from the ERIC literature to examine the characteristics of quality circles and to describe actual examples of the use of quality circles at community colleges. WHAT IS A QUALITY CIRCLE? A quality circle consists of a small group of people who perform the same jobs or tasks. This group meets voluntarily, on a regular basis, to discuss problems, seek solutions, and cooperate with management in the implementation of those solutions. Quality circles operate on the principle that employee participation in decision-making and problem-solving improves the quality of work. Through the circle, members generate mutual respect and trust as they work on solutions to common, on-the-job problems. A review of the literature shows that quality circles have several defining characteristics (see References). First, participation in a quality circle is strictly voluntary. Second, members of the circles set their own rules and priorities and select the problems that are to be discussed. Third, decisions are made by consensus; open communication is encouraged and negative criticism is discouraged. Finally, quality circles utilize organized approaches to problem-solving, including brain-storming and cause-and-effect diagramming; persons who act as circle leaders need to be familiar with these and other participative management techniques. Ideally, then, quality circles are not hampered by members who are not personally committed to the process; in addition, the organized approach to problem solving prevents quality circles from holding unproductive rap sessions. HOW ARE QUALITY CIRCLES UTILIZED? Quality circles in industry have been known to increase productivity, improve quality, boost employee morale, and serve as a human resource development tool; these same benefits may be accrued in education. In fact, quality circles in community colleges have been used to solve problems in administrative developments (Ladwig, 1983; Moretz, 1983), and in student support services (Ladwig, 1983; Cohen, 1983). Examples of quality circle applications at the community college are described below. CENTRAL PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE. As part of a campus-wide effort to incorporate quality circles in college operations, Central Piedmont Community College (NC) established a quality circle at one of its off-campus learning centers. The circle, composed of the director and volunteer staff members, used brainstorming to develop a list of goals for the center, rank ordered those goals by priority on a decision grid, and drew cause-and-effect diagrams to determine why those goals aren't always met. In the course of this analysis, the quality circle participants determined that a better telephone system was needed to help the center achieve its objectives. Circle members listed the ways in which the telephone system undermined the center's efficiency, kept a log sheet for a month to document the occurrences and nature of those telephone problems, and developed recommendations for changes in telephone equipment and configuration. The quality circle not only solved the telephone problem, but also produced a net savings in staff time of about $100 per month. Moretz (1983) details the accomplishments of this quality circle and reviews the administrative procedures used by Central Piedmont Community College to implement quality circles in all aspects of campus management. MIDDLESEX COUNTY COLLEGE. Middlesex County College (NJ) turned to quality circles in an attempt to improve the cost efficiency of Project COPS (Career Oriented Peer Services), a peer tutoring program that matches second-year tutors with high-risk, first-year students. Quality circles were deemed an inexpensive way to increase tutoring effectiveness and to help student tutors prepare for the world of employment. Two peer-tutor quality circles were established: one composed of peer-tutors from business-oriented disciplines, and one composed of peer tutors from the engineering program. The business-oriented circle focused on the overdependence of tutees on the peer tutoring staff; recommended solutions included a stronger emphasis on tutee note-taking, time management, attendance and other factors that are central to a student's self-reliance. The engineering-oriented circle concentrated upon improving campus awareness of the peer tutoring center through utilization of faculty announcements, student clubs, faculty advisors, and other means. Cohen (1983) provides further information. LAKESHORE TECHNICAL INSTITUTE (LTI). The LTI Board of Education implemented a campus-wide quality circle project, because faculty, management, and support staff expressed a desire to improve work efficiency and to become more involved in campus decision-making processes. Two types of quality circles were implemented: management circles, composed of administrators, program supervisors, program coordinators and educational specialists, and nonmanagement circles, composed of faculty and support service staff. Each circle met to identify problems and to find solutions. Among other accomplishments, the management circles developed an idea/suggestion memo system, intramural sporting events for LTI staff, guidelines for recognizing staff service, and a "who's who/what's what" recognition program. The nonmanagement quality circles recommended the development of a computerized information system to assist faculty in record-keeping, work processing, and grading. Overall, the response to the quality circles project at LTI was favorable. Improvements in employee attitudes, the quality of instructional and support services, and the work environment itself were seen as the result of the project. Ladwig (1983) provides an indepth analysis of the project. HOW ARE QUALITY CIRCLES USED IN THE CLASSROOM? Although quality circles have their roots in industry, quality circles have a promise as a pedagogical tool that makes students responsible for their own learning and increases class participation. Two such applications are described in the literature, one at Valley Forge Military Junior College (Murray) and the other at the Pennsylvania State University (Hirshfield). Murray (1983) describes a quality circle made up of 12 students in an American History survey course. These students studied the purpose and operation of quality circles and used the quality circle method to determine the type and frequency of written assignments, the content of lectures, and the testing methods to be used. The students took a serious interest in managing the class and, in fact, opted for rigorous assignments. Among other decisions, for example, the quality circle decided to reduce the time devoted to lectures, to increase the time available for discussion, to change the location of the class to facilitate discussions, and to use essay exams for grading. Murray feels that the students moved toward "a firmer, more scholarly approach" (p. 7). In addition, class participation increased from about 30 to 75 percent. In a similar undertaking Hirshfield (1983) selected eight students from a large class in an East Asia history class to form a quality circle. Again, the decisions made by the quality circle members altered the course structure and content. Among other actions, the quality circle implemented the use of a daily outline, increased student participation in the selection of poetry and films used in the class, and urged the use of contemporary analysis to illustrate the use of course material to modern-day problems. After two years of experimenting with quality circles in the classroom, Hirshfield feels confident that they are a valuable academic tool; quality circles increase student familiarity with course material and provide students with valuable experience in decision making and problem solving. Both Hirshfield and Murray note that quality circles imbue students with a greater sense of purpose in the classroom and provide students with an enhanced sense of self-worth. WHAT ARE SOME PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH QUALITY CIRCLES? The number one reason for quality circle failure is inadequate training. A lack of understanding quality circle technique may cause management to be reluctant to initiate circles, act upon circle suggestions or, eager for easy solutions, may implement quality circles too quickly. Circle members may be unsure of their purpose, reluctant to believe that participation is truly voluntary or, may simply lose interest. As mentioned earlier, training in quality technique is necessary to keep the circle productive and to prevent gripe sessions. Furthermore circle implementation must be well thought out and introduced as an on-going process, and not oriented toward a single problem (Ladwig, 1983). Quality circles in academia face special problems. Many academics view education as an intangible, and so, not applicable to the productivity-boosting techniques employed by industry. Furthermore, educators tend to emphasize individual achievement and personal importance, which may run contrary to group participation. Highly educated circle members tend to become over philosophical about the purpose of the circle and may hamper circle progress. Finally, the academic schedule is not particularly conducive to quality circles; end of term rushes and vacation breaks tend to disturb circle momentum (Moretz, 1983). Though originally intended for industry, the quality circle clearly has uses in education. Community colleges seeking to improve employee and student morale through participative management techniques may well wish to learn more about the quality circle, its uses, and its effects. REFERENCES Further information on the applications of quality circles can be obtained through the small but growing literature on quality circles in higher education. This literature is accessible through manual or computer searches of the ERIC database; consult a librarian or contact the ERIC Clearinghouse for Junior Colleges, 8118 Math-Sciences Building, UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90024. Cohen, L. "Made-In-USA Quality Circles Become People-Building Tool." In Community and Junior College Journal. 52 (March 1983): 34-35. Hirshfield, C. "Quality Circles in the Classroom: An Experiment in the Pedagogical Uses of Japanese Management Methods." Paper Presented at the Annual Conference of the Eastern Community College Social Science Association, Williamsburg, Virginia, March 23-26, 1983. (ED 233 758). Ladwig, D. J. "Determining the Effectiveness and Evaluating the Implementation Process of a Quality/Performance Circles System Model to Assist in Institutional Decision Making and Problem Solving at Lakeshore Technical Institute." Ed.D. Dissertation, Nova University, 1983. (ED 231 452). Moretz, H. L. "Quality Circles in Education. Final Report." Charlotte, NC: Central Piedmont Community College, 1983. (ED 231 479) Murray, P. "The Quality Circle and the American Survey: What to Do When You Can't Have Lunch." Unpublished paper, 1983. (ED 233 770)