The Elements of Cooperative Learning
The basic elements in cooperative learning are as follows (Lungdren, 1994):
Students must have the perception that they "drown or swim together."
Students must have responsibilities towards students or other students in the group, in addition to responsibility towards themselves in learning the material at hand.
Students must be of the view that they all have the same goal.
Students divide assignments and share responsibilities among group members.
Students are given an evaluation or award that will influence the group evaluation.
Students share leadership while they acquire cooperative skills while studying.
Each student will be asked individually to take responsibility for the material handled in a cooperative group.
According to Thompson, et al. (1995), In cooperative learning students learn together in small groups that help one another. Classes are arranged in groups of 4 or 6 students, with heterogeneous abilities. The purpose of heterogeneous groups is to consist of a mixture of student abilities, gender, and ethnicity. This is useful for training students to accept differences and work with friends with different backgrounds.
In cooperative learning special skills are taught in order to work well together in the group, such as being a good listener, students are given an activity sheet containing questions or assignments planned to be taught. During group work, the task of group members is to achieve completeness (Slavin, 1995).
Elements of Cooperative Learning
Learning that is done in groups does not necessarily reflect cooperative learning. Technically, it seems that the process of learning together, but sometimes it is only learning done together at the same time, but does not reflect collaboration between group members. For that to truly reflect cooperative learning, it is necessary to consider the elements of cooperative learning as follows (Jonson and Smith, 1991; Anita Lie, 2004):
Positive interdependence
The success of a work is very dependent on the efforts of each member. Journalists search and write news, edit editors, and typists type the text. This chain of cooperation continues through those who are in the printing press and delivering newspapers. All of these people work towards achieving one common goal, namely the publication of a newspaper and the arrival of the newspaper in the hands of the reader.
To create effective work groups, teachers need to arrange tasks so that each group member has to complete their own tasks so that the others can achieve their goals. In the Jigsaw method, Aronson suggests the number of group members is limited to four people and all four members are assigned to read different sections. These four members then gather and exchange information. Next, the teacher will evaluate them about the whole section. In this way, every member inevitably feels responsible for completing his tasks so that others can succeed.
Assessment is also done in a unique way. Each student gets their own grades and group scores. Group values are formed from the "contribution" of each member. To maintain fairness, each member contributes points above their average value. For example, the average value of A is 65 and this time he gets 72, he will contribute 7 points to their group's score. Thus, each student will have the opportunity to contribute group values. In addition, some disadvantaged students will not feel inferior to their peers because they also make a contribution.