Cooperative learning through telecommunications
Authors: Margaret Riel
Venue: ACM SIGCUE Outlook (1992)

Computer networking provides a mechanism for developing cooperative learning among students in distant locations and at the same time providing for the professional development of teachers within the classroom environment. The same findings reported for students in cooperative learning settings were found for teachers who participated in Learning Circles on the AT amp;T Learning Network. Teachers acquired knowledge, developed new instructional strategies, increased their self-esteem and developed professional and personal relationships with their peers.Dewey (1916) was alarmed at the growing split between direct experience and abstract concept learning that had become the daily routine in the classrooms of his time. School experiences, he argued, should weave into its very fabric the values, social order, and processes it seeks to impart and not merely teach about these processes. Cooperative learning is promoted as a way to transform students' school experience in the spirit of Dewey's fundamental principle of direct experiences. Cooperative learning principles, argues Sharon (1984), create a humane, engaging and social instructional system that is more likely to help children assume responsible adult roles and act on their environment creatively.The benefits of cooperative learning environments for children have been demonstrated (Slavin 1983; Sharon 1984; Kagan 1986) but the transformation of traditional classrooms into the social organization required by cooperative learning is a complex process. Can teachers learn to create cooperative learning environments when they themselves are isolated in the traditional model of schools?"The assumption that teachers can creat and maintain the conditions that make school learning and school living stimulating for children without the same conditions for teachers, has no warrant in the history of man (Sarason 1976:123--124)."One way to address the problem identified by Sarason is through the extension of the principles of cooperative learning into the classroom experience of teachers through asynchronous computer networking across classrooms.The Learning Circle design of the AT amp;T Learning Network parallels Sharon's group investigation model by applying their classroom cooperative learning procedures across classrooms. A Learning Circle is a small number of classrooms that interact electronically to accomplish a shared goal. Each classroom in a Learning Circle is a team that contributes to the overall end product. Asynchronous communication on the Learning Network makes it possible for students to interact with a number of groups at the same time without creating the chaotic situation that would result if this were attempted in a face-to-face setting. Each class sponsors one of the projects in the Learning Circle and then summarizes the collective work for inclusion in the Circle publication. This framework creates cooperative work within a team, similar to the cooperative learning framework, but differs in creating cooperative working patterns between the teams.A Circle coordinator facilitates Circle interaction. But since each classroom team has a skilled leader, a teacher, helping to organize the interaction, there is less of a need for the strong centralized control that characterizes cooperative teamwork within a single classroom. Electronic networks provide a new way to organize cooperative learning within and across classrooms. It provides a tool that helps students and teachers work collaboratively with their peers in distant locations.