NUTSHELL NOTES "Teaching tips in a nutshell" - The University of Colorado at Denver's One-page Newsletter for Teaching Excellence

To contrast cooperative learning with the conventional lecture approach, let's look at two ways to engage the class with a question. In the traditional lecture mode, which most of us learned through example, one might ask a question, then pause to carefully hear the answer presented as students respond. We might then take any good opportunity at this point to encourage our students by giving praise and credit for good answers, and to clarify, expand, or engage in more discussion on the material. The cooperative learning model, however, looks a bit more critically at what is happening aside from this good teaching practice. It takes note of the fact that the questions are probably answered by just a few better students, and that most of the class is not actively engaged. Indeed, in most classes, 90% of the discussion is done by less than 10% of the students!

An alternative approach — using the same question to engage the entire class — is the cooperative learning technique called "THINK-PAIR-SHARE." In this latter approach, one poses the question or problem, perhaps in writing on an overhead or the blackboard. Instead of allowing the most active students to answer the question, one states "Turn to your nearest neighbor and consider this question between you. You have two minutes for the two of you to arrive at your best answer and an additional thirty seconds to outline it in writing." Next, one calls at random on several pairs of students. If some pairs have conflicting or alternative solutions, this is the best possible result, because the class (as pairs) must now consider the process used to arrive at a good solution. Using student-pair responses, the instructor helps to track and organize the process on the board. All the student pairs must agree that the logic which the class finally produces on the board is a reasonable one that will lead to a successful solution. A final "sharing" could occur if the instructor told the students: "OK! Now go back into your pairs; each member gets one minute of the following two minutes to teach the other member how to approach and solve this kind of problem." At that point the entire class has been engaged in thinking, reviewing, generalizing, and processing by teaching.

THINK-PAIR-SHARE is one of the simplest of all cooperative learning techniques. Even in a traditional lecture setting, this technique is one of the best ways to turn an unresponsive "stonewalling" class into a responsive class that is alive, engaged and inquisitive.

To learn cooperative learning is similar to learning to ski; one must start gradually and build to more complex challenges. It also involves educating students in how to approach learning in a cooperative way.