Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
I. INTRODUCTION
Cooperative learning is not new to education. It has
been happening for decades. Cooperative language
learning is part of a more general instructional approach
also known as collaborative learning. This method of
instruction makes maximum use of cooperative activities
and involves pairs and small groups of learners in the
classroom (Richard & Rodgers, 2001). According to
Paulson and Faust (1999), cooperative learning is a type
of active learning in which students work as groups of
three or more, rather than alone or in pairs. There is a
large amount of research proving the benefits of active
learning. In active learning students are active in the
classroom rather than merely passively listening to an
instructor's lecture. There are a few definitions on
cooperative learning made by prominent scholars.
Cooperative learning is one of the most remarkable and
fertile areas of theory, research and practice in education.
Received April 13, 2015; Accepted May 23, 2015.
2015 Khate Sefid Press
1
II. METHOD
A. Participants
The participants of this study were sixty second-year
students of pharmacy from Tabriz University of Medical
Sciences. Their age range was between 21-23 and all of
them had already passed the entrance University exam.
The sample of this study consisted of 60 students who
were selected randomly from among 78 pharmacy
students' population who were required to pass medical
terminology course of study. They were divided into two
classes, each containing 30 students. In both classes there
were an equal number of males and females. The
participants of this study had passed 60 courses of study.
Moreover, all of them had passed general English course
as a prerequisite for their medical terminology course. In
order to make sure that all participants are homogeneous
a pretest was used in this study.
B. Materials and Instruments
59
C. Procedures
After obtaining the official agreement of the instructors
to conduct the study, the researcher explained and
clarified the components of cooperative learning to them.
Moreover the exact design of the study and the way the
instructors would teach in each class were clarified to
them. The two classes and two instructors were randomly
assigned names as A and B. At first 78 pharmacy students
who were required to pass medical terminology course of
study were randomly assigned numbers. Then they were
assigned into two groups of males and females. Finally,
15 males and 15 females were randomly assigned into
each class. This randomization of participants was done
to ensure that any difference between and within the
groups were not systematic at the outset of the study and
that any possible differences were due to chance and not
because of individual characteristics in the group.
Regarding gender composition, equal size of males and
females were chosen so that male-dominated or femaledominated of atmosphere of the classes should not affect
the students' performance in the groups. In both classes,
class A and B, the first eight sessions were taught by
instructor A and the next eight sessions instructor B to
control for the effect of different characteristics of the
instructors. In other words, in class A the first eight
sessions were taught by instructor A using traditional
approach and the second eight sessions by instructor B
using cooperative learning approach.
In other words, in class A the first eight sessions was
taught by instructor A using traditional approach and the
second eight sessions was taught by instructor B using
cooperative learning approach.
But, in class B the first eight sessions was taught by
Independent
Sample T-test
Independent
Sample T-test
Independent
Sample T-test
Post-test
one
Post-test
two
* Not significant
** Significant at p <0.05
0.98
58
0.92*
3.82
58
0.00**
4.26
58
0.00**
Independent
Sample Ttest
Cooperative Independent
Sample Ttest
* Not significant
58
0.89*
V. CONCLUSION
0.50
58
0.62*
REFERENCES
Johnson, D.W., & Johnson, R.T. (1987) Learning together
and alone: Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic
learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Johnson, D.W., & Johnson, R.T. (1996). Meaningful and
manageable assessment through cooperative learning. Edina:
Interaction Book Company.
Johnson, D.W., & Johnson, R.T. (1998). Cooperative and
social interdependence theory. Educational Researcher, 38 (5),
365379. doi: 10.3102/0013189X09339057
Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R.T., & Smith, K. (1991). Active
Learning: Cooperation in the college classroom, Edina, MN:
Interaction Book Company Gross Davis, B. (2009). Tools for
Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Nation, I.S.P., (2001). Learning vocabulary in another
language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sarriff, A. (2010). Teaching pharmacy: Need for a change,
International journal of pharmacy teaching and practices, 1(1),
1-4.
Zingone, M. M., Franks, A. S., Guirguis, A. B., George, Ch.
M., Howard-Thompson, A., & Heidel E. (2010). Comparing
team-based and mixed active-learning methods in an
ambulatory care elective course. American journal of
pharmaceutical education, 74 (9), 160
AUTHOR
Zohreh Adeli Jam is currently a PhD student at University of
Tehran Kish international campus, Iran. She graduated with a
Bachelors degree from Islamic Azad University in Tabriz, Iran.
Following her studies Zohreh Adeli Jam attended Payam-eNoor University at Tehran gaining her Masters degree in
Teaching English. Zohreh Adeli Jam is interested in
Psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and discourse analysis.
64