Month: June 2020

Cooperative learning is a learning approach dividing students into groups and grading them as a team by completing specific tasks together. Because each person in the team has its responsibility and the students are graded as a team rather than an individual, the quality of the work dependent on everyone in the group. Through the learning process, students will need to share information and cooperate. Therefore, cooperative learning can enhance student independence and cooperating skill.

In addition, cooperative learning allows discussion and teamwork. Students are active participants; hence, the students are more engaged and motivated. The role of the teacher is changed as well. Instead of the information provider as in the traditional classroom, the teacher facilitates the student’s learning. Students learn through research and teaching each other.

Although cooperative learning offers opportunities for discussion and self-motivation, it does not align our group topic. Our group topic is to offer an English class to higher educated people, introducing a concept of English grammar. The problem of cooperative learning is that students cannot be graded/measured independently. In this case, it is hard to tell if a student has learned how to implement what they learned in reading/writing. Furthermore, rather than a complicated concept, the course will introduce several simple concepts to students. The number of concepts to introduce may be quite a lot throughout the course. Couple group assignments or final project is difficult to include all the knowledge taught from the course. Perhaps it will be great to include a cooperative group project as part of the final assessment of the course. Our team decided to select another learning approach that will meet the learning objective better.

Interactive learning often allows digital technology to play an important role in the learning experience. It is a learning process inviting students to interact socially and practically. Indeed, this is quite convenient and efficient in introducing learning materials. However, this also creates new issues that the traditional learning process has not faced before. One problem I found that interactive learning may have is the ability of communication. Unlike traditional education, interactive learning encourages students to interact with digital devices, teachers, or other students. A typical problem we will find here is the ability of languages and socializing. Besides, interactive learning is more difficult to ensure the learning efficiency of each student. If it is a kind of group activity or group discussion, it is hard to produce the same experience to the individual who is absent as well. Therefore, interactive learning is even more important to ensure the resource is delivered as the learning designer expected to the individuals.

One strategy to meet the goal is to keep things digital. Lectures and discussion can always be transferred to videos or audios. With digital technology, we can eliminate the boundaries of language, time, and space. When an unexpected event occurs, students can still have access to the lectures (like most of the University do under COVID-19), preventing them from losing their learning opportunities. For example, it is possible to translate a lecture into a different language and reproduce it on a different time and location for a student who could not attaint the class due to an unexpected event.

Furthermore, the class size should be reduced. Students should spread into smaller groups instead of a large class, such that students with similar abilities or difficulties can be treated at the same time to allow the teacher to easier keep track of their learning progress. This also offers another opportunity for the students who would like to join the activity or discussion again. Reducing the class size also increases the chance for students to participate and present themselves.