Cooperative Learning: Student Perspectives

"Now we've got a system going. The first week Tavares was the facilitator - the facilitator's job is to tell the group what the assignment is, how to do it, explain what we have to do, and what we need to have done. I was the recorder. The recorder takes down any notes...Tresanay was the observer and she would observe the group and at the end she'd tell us what the problems were and what we did right, and she would like encourage us. Then every other week we would switch jobs. At the beginning all we did was argue, but Ms. Altman was talking about how we improved."

"There are a few advantages of working in a group. For one thing, if one group member is sick you don't have to stop working on the project. For another thing, you have more people to go to the library to look for information. The other good thing about working in a group is you can become closer to the friends that you already have, and you can make new ones. Working in a group has lots of other advantages like sharing and things like that that aren't as important as these that were named above. "

"Richie would read this (calendar) and tell us what we were supposed to do without us having to read it all the time. While one person was doing work he'd show us what we're supposed to do. That way we could all be doing work and get done faster."

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