Teaching Practices for Effective Cooperative Learning in an Online Learning Environment (OLE)

Journal of Information Systems Education, Fall 2007 by Hutchinson, Damien

ABSTRACT

As a teaching practice the application of cooperative learning in tertiary education can present unique challenges for both the practitioner and her students. Mastering this teaching approach requires careful planning, design and implementation for effective deployment in a face-to-face setting. In this setting the success of the cooperative learning approach has been demonstrated. The complexity is significantly increased by additional variables such as the selection and application of technological teaching tools and the change in nature of existing variables including awareness of students' social and communication skills when applying this practice in an Online Learning Environment (OLE). In addition student acceptance of this e-learning approach to learning also needs to be carefully considered. The practitioner must be aware of these factors and have suitable methods in place to support collaboration and interaction between student groups to ensure the ultimate goal with regard to students' learning is achieved. This paper considers how cooperative learning can be combined effectively with these variables and factors of an OLE, and begins with the presentation of a conceptual framework to represent this relationship as a constructive teaching practice. It is anticipated that the conceptual framework would be applied by other practitioners to facilitate cooperative teaching within their OLE. To demonstrate the validity of the framework a case scenario is provided using an Information Technology (IT) undergraduate unit named 'IT Practice'. This is a wholly online unit where extensive participation by the students within small groups is a core requirement. The paper demonstrates the themes of designing curriculum and assessment, as well as flexible teaching strategies for learner diversity but primarily concentrates on managing an effective OLE; that is managing small groups in an online teaching environment.

Keywords: Online Learning, Cooperative Learning, Computer Mediated Learning, Learner Diversity, Assessment

1. INTRODUCTION

Whether the online teaching and learning environment is being driven individually or collaboratively by globalisation, the ever prominent demand for lifelong learning, simulation of work place environments, industry requirements or tertiary institutions, it is all but assured that this approach to teaching will only increase and may even become the learning paradigm of the future. This premise is supported by the affordability and ubiquity of e-learning, which together with facilitating a community of learners is clearly disrupting the dominant technology in higher education - the lecture (Garrison and Anderson 2003, p. 24). Given this state of affairs it is essential that the practitioner is equipped with the pedagogical skill set to manage these OLEs (Nichol & Blashki 2007).

Subsequently the challenge faced by our teaching team can be phrased simply as: How to successfully manage small groups to achieve effective learning in an OLE. Although it may sound somewhat straightforward, the issue becomes quite complex beyond simply placing individuals in groups and telling them to work together. Our experience and application of teaching methods for group oriented activities has been somewhat challenging in a face-to-face teaching environment Ia our view, transposing these ideas onto an online teaching platform presents an even greater challenge.

This paper forms the relationship between the elements and requirements for cooperative teaching and learning environments, and the required elements for effective online teaching and learning. The relationship between both of these areas is represented as a conceptual framework. The framework presents a set of criteria which can be applied to a cooperative OLE. The wholly online unit called IT Practice (see section 4) is used to demonstrate the application of the conceptual framework.

The terms collaborative learning and cooperative learning are sometimes used interchangeably. This is understandable since they both refer to the instructional use of small groups where students work together to complete a particular task (Palmer, Peters and Streetman 2007). However the following distinction is made for the purpose of this paper. The teaching team confer that collaborative learning is the actual social engagement and exchange between the members of a group; the process of working and interacting together to arrive at an answer or solution to the learning task (Smith and MacGregor 1992). Co-operative learning is different because it refers to the structure that is put in place by the instructor to facilitate collaborative learning. Moreover cooperative learning provides the directions for learning, where the focus is on the product of learning (Myers 1991); the accomplishment of an end product or goal which is closely controlled by the teacher (Rockwood 1995a; Rockwood 1995b; Cooper and Robinson 1998). In contrast to cooperative learning which is teachercentred, collaborative learning is more student-centred. M collaborative learning the group members respond to an activity by taking a more active role and rely on each other, sharing authority and acceptance of responsibility among themselves to determine the groups' actions (Smith and MacGregor 1992). In this way, these terms have been intentionally differentiated for the purpose of conveying the teachers' role for managing the cooperative OLE as opposed to the students collaborating in their group to solve a particular task.