**1. Introduction**

The role of instructor is evolving from the presenter of information to the designer of learning experiences that maximize student active engagement [1]. The influences behind this change include (a) the growing awareness that learning experiences should be active in ways that maximize student engagement and (b) the evidence that careful design of instructional

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

experiences makes students' acquisition of knowledge and competencies more efficient, effective, and appealing. One of the most useful methods of ensuring that students are actively engaged in learning experiences is cooperative learning. In addition, it is the foundation on which many of the active learning and student engagement procedures are built. First, we will explain the relationship between cooperative learning and active learning and student engagement. Second, we will explain the nature of cooperative learning.

**1.2. Problem-based learning**

**1.3. Team-based learning**

or Problem-Based Cooperative Learning.

another form of cooperative learning.

**1.4. Collaborative learning**

**1.5. Peer-assisted learning**

*Problem-based learning* may be defined as assigning students to small groups and giving the groups a problem to understand and solve, with the goal of having students learn relevant information and procedures [2–4]. While students work in small groups the instructor facilitates and guides their work. Problem-based learning requires students to work in small groups to ensure that the relevant information and procedures are discovered and mastered by all members of the group, thus making cooperative learning the foundation on which problem-based learning is built. When this connection between cooperative learning and problem-based learning is explicit, it is known as Cooperative Problem-Based Learning

Cooperative Learning: The Foundation for Active Learning

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In *team-based learning* instructors assign students with diverse skill sets and backgrounds to permanent groups of five to seven members to enhance the quality of student learning [5]. Students are individually accountable for homework assignments and for contributing to team efforts in class. Significant credit is given for inclass team activities and application exercises aimed at increasing both academic learning and team development. The activities are structured to give students frequent and timely feedback on their efforts. Since students work in teams to increase their own and teammates' learning, team-based learning is in effect

In the 1970s, Sir James Britton and others in England [6] created an active learning procedure known as Collaborative Learning based on the theorizing of Vygotsky [7]. Britton believed that a student's learning is derived from the community of learners made up of other students. Britton was opposed to providing specific definitions of the teacher's and students' roles, which he considered to be *training* (the application of explanations, instructions, or recipes for action). Instead, he recommended placing students in groups and letting them generate their own culture, community, and procedures for learning, which he considered to be *natural learning* (learning by making intuitive responses to whatever one's efforts produce). Britton believed the source of learning is dialogs and interactions with other students (and sometimes the teacher resulting from the positive interdependence among students' learning goals. The heart of collaborative learning, therefore, is the cooperative foundation of students

*Peer-assisted learning* (PALS) involves classmates of equal status actively helping each other to acquire knowledge and skills [8]. It subsumes *Reciprocal Peer Tutoring*, which places same-age students into pairs of comparable ability and gives them the responsibility is to keep each other engaged academically [9]. Peer-assisted learning is based on cooperation, as assistance

working together to maximize their own and each other's learning.

and encouragement tends not to take place in competitive interaction.

#### **1.1. Active learning and student engagement**

The first requirement for designing a learning experience is to ensure students are active rather than passive. Passive to active is a continuum, as no learning experience is entirely passive (even sleep has active components) or entirely active. The question is the degree to which a learning experience is structured to make students passive or active. Near the passive end of the continuum, learning is typically listening to the instructor or individually reading information with or without taking notes and highlighting key passages. Characteristics of passive learning are that the student is silent, isolated (working separately from others), and under the direction of others. Near the active end of the continuum, learning occurs when students construct, discover, and transform their own knowledge. Active learning requires students to engage meaningfully cognitively and emotionally with other students, the task assigned, and the materials or resources used to complete the task. Characteristics of active learning are that students are talking with others (i.e., engaged in dialogs), interacting with others (i.e., member of a pair, triad, or group of four), generating new ideas and cognitive structures (discovering their own insights and meaning from the learning activities), and determining their own direction (i.e., coordinating with groupmates as to the direction and speed of the work). Active learning typically requires students working in pairs or small group to conceptualize, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate during discussions the information, procedures, strategies, and conceptual frameworks being learned.

Active learning subsumes students engaging intellectually and emotionally in the learning activities. The continuum of student engagement (both intellectually and emotionally) has disengagement at one end and engagement at the other. Student *disengagement* is defined as off-task behaviors, negative emotions, and the absence of focus, interest, effort, curiosity, persistence, the use of cognitive strategies, and other indicators of learning. Student *engagement* is students' exerting effort to complete the learning task, reflecting interest in completing the task successfully, focus on the task, curiosity about the task and its content, persistence, and the use of cognitive strategies. Engagement may be differentiated into three types: behavioral engagement (attending class, doing homework), cognitive engagement (effort to understand information and master complex skills), and emotional engagement (positive reactions to classmates, academic task and materials, teachers, and so forth).

Well-designed lessons require students to be active and engaged. These two aspects of lessons overlap, so that often if you get one, you get the other. The easiest way to ensure that students are active and engaged in learning may be to use cooperative learning. In addition, many of the forms of active learning being implemented in schools and universities are based on the foundation of cooperative learning. Some of the most common are discussed below. This is by no means an exhaustive list.
