Adventures In Cooperative Learning: An Ongoing Experiment

Global competition has and will continue to drive the ways in which U.S. companies do business. Increasingly, those who hire engineering graduates look for employees who are not only technically proficient, but who have also demonstrated leadership and initiative in team settings. Since much engineering work takes place in teams, cooperative learning is a useful paradigm for developing these skills in our students. Furthermore, participation in groups representing a diversity of backgrounds and cultures prepares the engineering graduate to function in the global arena. Many studies argue that the use of formal cooperative learning groups in engineering courses has a positive effect on student outcomes. While the literature reports many successes with this teaching methodology, it is more difficult to find practical strategies for beginning to integrate cooperative learning groups in a significant way in courses that have traditionally been taught in a predominantly lecture mode. This paper approaches the adoption of a formal cooperative learning component from a practical perspective. The first author has implemented a formal cooperative learning component in engineering courses taught in the last two years. The strategies discussed here result from these early attempts to make cooperative learning groups work, providing a useful guide for instructors who wish to incorporate this innovative teaching style into their own courses. The paper also discusses the results of a recent experiment in cooperative learning conducted by the co-authors.