Premium
“I believe I will go out of this class actually knowing something”: Cooperative learning activities in physical chemistry
Author(s) -
Hamby Towns Marcy,
Grant Edward R.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal of research in science teaching
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.067
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1098-2736
pISSN - 0022-4308
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1098-2736(199710)34:8<819::aid-tea5>3.0.co;2-y
Subject(s) - interpersonal communication , mathematics education , psychology , class (philosophy) , cooperative learning , perspective (graphical) , rote learning , science education , concept learning , interpersonal relationship , conceptual change , meaningful learning , teaching method , pedagogy , social psychology , epistemology , computer science , philosophy , artificial intelligence
The purposes of this study were to describe the structure of events during cooperative learning activities—Friday discussion sessions—in a graduate‐level thermodynamics course and to understand what these activities meant to the students. First, we describe the structure of Friday discussion sessions in our classroom, which were used to focus student attention on conceptual issues rather than algorithmic problem solving. Second, we delineate findings which emerge from the perspective of the students. We found that cooperative learning activities move students away from rote learning strategies and toward more meaningful strategies which allowed them to integrate concepts over the entire semester. In addition, we discovered that the sharing of insights and ideas between students leads to the development of interpersonal skills and communication skills which the students perceive as an important component of the Friday discussion sessions. Implications for further classroom use, low‐status versus high‐status students, and assessment are discussed. J Res Sci Teach 34: 819–835, 1997.