WHY COLLABORATE?

Student-Student Interaction can be

• Competitive: students work hard to do better or take it easy
• Individualistic: concern for his or her own success without regard for the success or failure of others
• Cooperative: working together to accomplish shared goals

Compared with competitive and individualistic situations, students working cooperatively

• Input
  • seek significantly more information from other people
  • are less biased and have fewer misperceptions in comprehending the viewpoints and positions of others
• Interaction
  • more accurately communicate information by verbalizing ideas and information more frequently, attending to others' statements more carefully, and accepting others' ideas more frequently
  • make optimal use of the information provided by other students
• Feedback
  • receive more feedback about their ideas
  • more apt to have their ideas challenged, and be forced to reconceptualize their ideas

   

From David Johnson, Roger Johnson, and Karl Smith. 1991. Cooperative Learning. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report, No. 4. Washington, DC: The George Washington University.