Preparing Your Students for Teamwork - Setting the Climate for Cooperative Learning

While many students are enthused about the opportunity to learn with and from their peers, it is not uncommon to encounter students who are reluctant to participate in any sort of group activities. This reluctance could be due to a preference for working independently or due to prior bad experiences with poorly designed group projects. Providing students with a positive experience with and explicit information about active/cooperative learning (A/CL) right away helps to overcome reluctance and start the class with clear expectations.
We set the tone for our classes in the first few minutes on the first day. So, rather than simply telling students that cooperation makes learning more enjoyable or more efficient, it’s better to demonstrate it. Begin your class by putting students into pairs or teams and having them participate in a simple, well-structured cooperative activity. The activity could introduce your course, cooperative learning, or your content. You might also point out how this type of learning will build the skills they will need for success in industry, business, or academia.

Then, give your students information in your syllabus about what teamwork will mean to them in terms of attendance, participation in class, team meeting time outside of class, and especially, grading. Let students know about your policies on group and individual grades. Also, help them to understand that, when you do choose to use group grades, the assignments will be carefully structured: you will help them acquire the skills they need to work together successfully, and you will have ways of monitoring for individual accountability. Finally, acknowledge that some people would prefer to work alone and point out the activities and assignments they’ll be working on independently.

While all of our faculty and experts agreed on giving students clear information on course policies regarding A/CL, their approaches for introducing it to students varied. Look below to see some of the considerations that influenced their approaches.

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