1.3.5. Establishing a Cooperative Task Structure in Your Classroom

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Specify the goal of the activity

Structure the task

Teach and evaluate the collaborative process

Monitor group performance

Debrief

  1.3.5.1. Specify the goal of the activity

The goal of a cooperative learning activity specifies the product and/or behaviors that are expected at the end of the activity. To ensure the desired outcome, your job is to identify the outcome, check for understanding, and set a cooperative tone. Each of these steps is described in the following subsections.

Identify the Outcome

Check for Understanding

Set a Cooperative Tone

Identify the Outcome

You must clearly articulate the form of the final product or performance from the beginning. For each of the outcomes just listed, you should illustrate the style, format, and length of the product that will constitute acceptable group work. The outcome can be different form:

Written group reports
Higher individual achievement on an end-of-activity test
Enumeration of critical issues
Critique of an assigned reading

Check for Understanding

Check for understanding of the goal and your directions for achieving it. Using a few average and high performers as a steering group, ask for an oral speech of your goal and directions. The entire class can benefit from hearing them again, and you can correct them if needed.

Set a Cooperative Tone

It may be difficult for some of your learners to get the competitive spirit out of their blood. Your job at the start of a cooperative learning activity is to set the tone: “two heads are better than one”, “work together or fail together” can remind groups the cooperative nature of the enterprise.

  1.3.5.2. Structuring the Task

Group size

Group composition

Time on Task

Role Assignment

Providing Reinforcement and Rewards

Group size

Group size is one of your most important decision.

The range of abilities within group

The time required for a group to reach consensus

The efficient sharing of materials within group

The time needed to complete the end product

Each of these four factors will be altered by the numbers assigned to groups. The most efficient group size for attaining a goal in the least time is four to six members.

Smaller groups make monitoring of group performance more difficult (because the number of times you can interact with each group is reduced), reach consensus smaller time and have less difficulty sharing limited materials.

Group composition

Unless the task specifically calls for specialized abilities, you will form most groups heterogonously, with a representative sample of all learners in a class. Therefore, you will assign to groups a mix of higher/lower ability, more verbal/less verbal, and more task-oriented/less task-oriented learners. This diversity usually contributes to the collaborative process by creating a natural flow of information.
Suggestions for forming groups:

Identify isolated students who are not chosen by any other classmates. Build a group of skillful students around each isolated learner.

Randomly assign students by having them count off.

Active involvement is when a group member talks about everything but the assigned goal of the group. Passive involvement is when a student doesn’t care and becomes a silent member of the group. To draw nonengaged learners into the cooperative activity is to structure the task so that success depends on the active involvement of all group members. Ways to make active involvement:

Request a product that requires a clearly defined division of labor to generate. Then assign specific individuals to each activity at the start of the session.

Within groups, form pairs that are responsible for looking over and actually correcting each other’s work.

Chart the group’s progress on individually assigned task, encourage poor or slow performers to work harder to improve the group’s overall progress.

Purposefully limit the resources given to a group, so that individual members must remain in personal contact to share materials and complete their assigned tasks.

Make one stage of the required product contingent on a previous stage that is responsibility of another person.

Time on Task

This obviously depends on task complexity. You need to determine the time to devote to group work and the time to devote to all groups coming together to share contributions. This latter time may be used for group reports, a whole-class discussion, debriefing to relate the work experiences of each of group to the end product.

Most time will be devoted to the work of individual groups, where the major portion of the end product is being completed.

Schedule group discussions or debriefings for the following class day, so that class members have ample time to reflect on their group reports.

Role Assignment

What roles should you assign to group members?
The task specialization, and division of labor it often requires, promotes the responsibility and idea sharing that marks an effective cooperative learning activity. Teachers can encourage the acceptance of individual responsibilty and idea sharing in a cooperative learning experience by role assignments within groups and sometimes by task specialization across groups. Some popular cooperative student roles are these:

Summarizer: Paraphases and plays back to the group major conclusions.

Checker: Checks controversial or debetable statements and conclusions for authenticity.

Researcher: Reads reference documents and acquires background information when more data needed

Runner: Acquires anything needed to complete the task: materials, equipment, reference works

Recorder: Commits to writing the major product of the group.

Supporter: Keeps the group moving forward by recording major milestones achieved, identifying progress made, encouraging efforts of individuals.

Observer/Troubleshooter: Takes notes and records information about the group process that may be useful during the whole-class discussion. Reports to a class leader or to you when problems appear great for a group.

There are other responsibilities for all group members to perform.

Ask other group members to explain their points clearly whenever you don’t understand

Be sure to check your answers against references or the text.

Encourage members of your group to go farther

Let everyone finish what they have to say whether you agree or disagree.

Don’t be bullied into changing your mind

Critisize ideas, not individuals.

  1.3.5.3. Providing Reinforcement and Rewards

You need to establish a system of reinforcement and reward to keep your learners on task and working toward the goal.

Grades: individual and group

Bonus points.

Social responsibilities

Tokens or privileges

Group contingencies

Grades: The familiar type used in competitive learning. Difference is that they stress the importance of individual effort in achieving the group goal. Cooperative learning grades usually incorporate both individual performance and the thoroughness, relevance, and accuracy of the group product.

Bonus points:It can be used in partnership with grades. It can be earned on the basis of how many group members reach a preestablished level of performance by the end of their group’s activity.

Social responsibilities: Reward your student’s individual efforts with desirable social responsibilities. (Such as granting the high performer the first pick of group role next time)

Tokens and privileges: They can be used to motivate individuals and group members. (Such as independent study time, trips to learning center)

Group contingencies: Teacher can use that one of three ways of rewarding the group based on the performance of its individuals:
Average-performance contingency (all members are graded or reinforced based on the average performance of all group members)
High-performance group contingency (the highest quarter of the group is the basis for grades, reinforcement, or privileges)
Low-performance group contingency (the lowest quarter of the group is the basis for individual grades or other forms of reinforcement)