Cooperative learning in distance learning
While collaborative learning, problem-based learning, and project-based learning have their place in distance education, cooperative learning stands out as the most structured and organized approach, offering unique benefits. This structured method, as outlined by Johnson and Johnson (1999), is especially valuable when creating a controlled and organized learning environment in virtual settings. Let's delve into the key principles of cooperative learning, as advocated by Johnson et al. (1999, 2014), and explore how it aligns with the structured nature of distance education:
Structured Groups and Roles: Cooperative learning in distance education involves forming structured groups with clear roles and responsibilities. Students work together within these predefined teams, ensuring a highly organized and coordinated approach to learning. This structured setup promotes efficiency and accountability.
Goal-Oriented Learning: The cooperative learning model emphasizes well-defined learning goals and outcomes. In structured distance education, this goal-oriented approach is particularly valuable for ensuring that all participants are on the same page and working toward specific educational objectives.
Teacher-Led Facilitation: In structured cooperative learning, the teacher takes on a more active role as a facilitator of knowledge and group processes. In distance education, this guidance is essential for maintaining order and ensuring that the learning process remains focused and organized.
Clear Guidelines and Procedures: Cooperative learning in structured distance education relies on clear guidelines and procedures to govern group interactions and tasks. These predefined rules create a controlled and systematic learning environment, which can be particularly effective in virtual settings where self-regulation is crucial.
Assessment Alignment: Assessments are aligned with the structured cooperative learning process, ensuring that both individual and group contributions are evaluated systematically. This approach promotes fairness and transparency in assessing student performance.
Sequential Learning Activities: Structured cooperative learning often involves carefully sequenced learning activities. This step-by-step progression ensures that students build upon their knowledge and skills in a systematic manner, mirroring the structured nature of distance education.
Feedback and Monitoring: Continuous feedback and monitoring are integral to structured cooperative learning. In distance education, digital tools and platforms facilitate ongoing assessment and feedback, allowing teachers to track progress and provide timely guidance.
Individual and Group Accountability: Both individual and group accountability are emphasized in structured cooperative learning. Students are responsible for their contributions, ensuring that everyone actively participates and contributes to the overall group success.
Skill Development: This structured approach fosters skill development, including effective communication, teamwork, and problem-solving. In distance education, these skills are vital for students to navigate virtual group dynamics and work cohesively toward shared objectives.
One of the most popular methods within problem-based methodology and one of the most beneficial in terms of learning is the Jigsaw (Saputra et al., 2019; Sulfemi & Kamalia, 2020). In essence, Jigsaw is an approach in which students are members of two different groups:
A group of "base" learners or a group of learners, who are not specialized in a particular content.
A group of "expert" learners: Those who through working on certain content acquire certain skills and certain content that lead them to become experts on that subject.
In this manner, each time students convene as a group, they are presented with distinct objectives and assignments that contribute to collective learning advancement. Within the context of the Jigsaw approach, students not only enhance their comprehension of the text but also have the opportunity to hone and apply their cognitive and communicative abilities.
A brief explanation of the methodology will be given in order to go more deeply into the methodology:
Base group formation: Students are divided into small groups, usually four to six people, and are given a specific topic or content to study.
Topic experts: Within each base group, each student is assigned a particular subtopic or aspect of the overall topic. Each student becomes an "expert" in his or her subtopic and is responsible for acquiring in-depth knowledge about it.
Expert groups: After studying their subtopics in core groups, the "experts" in each subtopic are grouped into new groups called "expert groups". In these groups, each student shares his or her knowledge of his or her subtopic with the others, so that all group members become proficient in all aspects of the overall topic.
Evaluation and presentation: Once the expert groups have acquired knowledge on all subtopics, students return to their original home groups. Each student shares the knowledge they acquired in the expert group with their base group peers. This may involve creating a joint report, a presentation, or any other activity that allows information sharing (Cult of Pedagogy, 2015).
This methodology was indeed designed and intended for face-to-face learning, but how can it be adapted to the online environment? A number of recommendations for doing so are given below:
Firstly, set the same task for all learners and through questions establish which learners are likely to be more or less expert in the different topics of the same task, These questions could be:
What don't you understand or are you confused about?
What do you want to know more about?
What makes sense to you?
Once the questions have been asked, they are shared with the class, and then the groups are designed (we recommend that the teacher creates the groups for greater learning).
The second step, is to separate each expert group according to subject matter into individual chat rooms to work on and deepen the specific content of the expert group.
The third step is to mix these groups of experts in different private rooms so that each "expert" person can explain to the other experts about his or her topic.
Finally, all the initial experts are brought together again and set up a presentation on the common topic, not only on what they were experts on. For this, it is proposed to use interactive presentations (as Nearpod) to encourage discussion and student engagement during the presentation.
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