“Sometimes we plan to meet together, but then after class one of my friends has to do
an activity for his faculty. Some refuse to come to practice the presentation, so in the
end, only a few of us turn up.”
Conclusion
This study has investigated and revealed student experience in an environment of cooperative
learning. The majority of respondents revealed that they feel more positive about this learning
experience and understand that this is a valuable part of their study in the university. It differs
from the note-taking class they had expected to have. The students’ positive perceptions indicated
that working together as a team helps create a comfortable environment for students
learning English. With their different abilities, ideas and points of view, they accomplish
their tasks. Students who find English very difficult benefit by sharing the workload.
The result of this study matches with the findings of the research by Charatdao (2010) in
terms of positive aspects. The findings revealed that the respondents were happy to work
with the group, and this resulted from their friendship, intimacy from frequent social interaction,
democratic performance such as voting for solution and group respect for every
member’s opinion. The results of the research by Charatdao also match with the studies by
Ghaith (2002), Hijzen, Boekaerts and Vedder (2006) and So and Brush (2008).
In addition, there are some other research studies on cooperative learning, which have led
to similar conclusions being drawn on the beneficial effects of learning in groups. Koh, Tan,
Wang, Ee and Liu (2007) conducted their study about students’ perceptions on the effectiveness
of group project work in promoting their social and cognitive skills. Their findings
showed that the students recognized that the program improved their competence in interacting
with others. Chang (2004) also found that students at junior college agreed that there were
a number of very valuable benefits to be gained from engaging in group project work, namely
in promoting teamwork and co-operation.
Although this study shows that, on the whole, the students perceive the techniques of cooperative
learning to be positive, some of the students are frustrated and perceive this
method negatively.
Feedback from the students reveals that some of them are not happy when their group
members do not take responsibility in doing their individual work before working as a team
in the classroom. Some of the students are concerned that they might miss some parts of the
content they are not assigned to concentrate on, and they complain that it is difficult to
schedule group meetings.
Recommendations
The lack of responsibility in doing individual work that some students complained about
means that those irresponsible students do not seem to understand the process of cooperative
learning. In this situation the leaders or other members of the group are overloaded with
work or have to do much harder work in order to accomplish the tasks. With regards to
leadership, it is suggested that to serve as coordinators for the tasks in groups, the group
leaders should be given some form of training to prepare them for their roles (Koh, Tan,
Wang, Ec and Liu, 2007).