I really love cooperative learning. I dont know what it is exactly about it that I love so much. It could be the fact that everyone has to pull together so that everyone gets a good grade. It could be that different backgrounds come together instead of being in their own little groups. It could be that it teaches social skills that are extremely handy to use as an adult. Maybe it's all of these and more.
As I was reading I could think of different things to do in the Health environment that would be great projects for face to face Cooperative Learning. However, I have had a hard time trying to visualize ways to do Cooperative Learning online. As I read, it occurred to me that most of what we do in our class this semester is based on Cooperative Learning. I have found that it is harder to facilitate Cooperative Learning from the online student perspective, but it can be done if everyone puts forth an effort and works together, just like Cooperative Learning was intended to do.
The good thing about Cooperative Learning online is that it makes the facilitator as well as the student think "outside the box." I believe that a facilitator would have to be creative in order to find ways to master the objectives that can be obtained like face to face Cooperative Learning does. But isn't that one of the fun things about that? We get to use our creativity.
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Comment by Mike Swinson
ReplyDeleteI think one key to facilitating is to assign roles or allow the group to assign their roles as they see fit. This may be open to perception or perhaps the teacher assigns the roles but this is one area of facilitating in which I enjoy. Opens the initial conversation in some sense and allows leadership to emerge from more than just one person in the context of each role...
Mike Swinson