Best Practice Guide for Designing and Delivering EPICUR courses

Guidance and resources to support EPICUR course development, cc-by-sa

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Collaborative or Cooperative Learning

Collaborative or Cooperative Learning

Why collaborative or cooperative learning?

Within EPICUR we use collaborative or cooperative learning interchangeably to mean active learning where students work in groups towards one or more shared learning outcomes (Johnson et al., 2006; Philip, 2004).

The rationale for working cooperatively in small groups is to optimise the group members’ learning by sharing and learning from each other (Johnson, Johnson and Smith, 2014).

5 key points about in-person or online collaborative or cooperative learning

  1. Working collaboratively can be challenging, especially when perceptions differ. It can be helpful to provide students with resources which support them working collaboratively. This resource ‘Group Work Dynamics’ was developed for students at SDU.

  2. When planning a collaborative or cooperative learning activity, what is most important the process of working together or the shared outcome? In some learning tasks, the output may just provide a focus when the main learning is through the group interaction. If the focus is on the collaborative learning outcome, it is important to provide clear guidance on what is expected as interpretations of the task are likely to vary.

  3. Encourage groups to develop, check in and review collaborative learning protocols or group rules which provide a structure for supportive group work.

  4. When organising groups, consider how to facilitate group formation. If students do not know each other, they are likely to form friendship groups to feel safe and secure. Here are some strategies to facilitate more diverse group formation: 'Organising student groups'

  5. If the course assessment is individual, this can be a disincentive for working collaboratively. Ways to encourage collaboration include designing interdependent collaborative learning tasks, which require students to work together and share feedback on each other’s contributions.

Collaboration and cooperation in practice

Collaboration Across Cultures: A Case Method Approach – An EPICUR course
This course was co-designed by two educators from different departments at the same university. The mode of delivery was a two-week intensive online course. The course included case-based learning activities with aligned course assessments. The syllabus explicitly informs students of the expectation that they will allocate time between synchronous classes to work with their team on their collaborative learning activities.

Links to resources for collaboration and cooperation

for in-person classes:

for online classes:

for hybrid classes:

References

  • Prince, M. (2004). Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research. Journal of Engineering Education, 93, 223-231.
  • Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Smith, K. A. (2014). Cooperative learning: Improving university instruction by basing practice on validated theory. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 25(3&4), 85-118.
  • Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., & Smith, K. (2006). Active learning: Cooperation in the university classroom (3rd ed.). Edina, MN: Interaction.

Interactive Approaches

Author(s)

This resource sheet has been co-written or written by

  • Donna Hurford (SDU)

Related Resource Sheets

Next steps

If you need further support with developing your course, please contact your local teaching support unit.
If you need further information on offering your course for EPICUR, please contact your EPICUR institutional coordinator.

Local teaching support units

EPICUR Institutional Coordinators

Adam Mickiewicz University
Karolina Choczaj
karmench@amu.edu.pl

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Nikos Kouloussis
nikoul@agro.auth.gr

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Michael Zacherle
zacherle@kit.edu

University of Amsterdam
Tiffany Boersma
t.a.boersma@uva.nl

Universität Freiburg
Charlotte Langowski
charlotte.langowski@zv.uni-freiburg.de

Université de Haute-Alsace
Léa Ziri
lea.ziri@uha.fr

Universität für Bodenkultur Wien
Nicolas Fries
nicolas.fries@boku.ac.at

University of Southern Denmark
Ida Thøstesen
ilt@sdu.dk

University of Strasbourg
Pascale Nachez
pnachez@unistra.fr

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Further use as OER explicitly permitted:
This Resource Sheet within the Best Practice Guide for Designing and Delivering EPICUR Courses was created by Donna Hurford, University of Southern Denmark.
Please attribute according to TASLL rule as follows: Collaborative or Cooperative Learning (Best Practice Guide for Designing and Delivering EPICUR Courses), by Donna Hurford, University of Southern Denmark. Any icons included are protected by copyright, © The Noun Project, used with permission.
License: This work and its contents are – unless otherwise stated – licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 . 

Last edited: 23. Jun 2025, 09:05, Hutz-Nierhoff, Dorthe [dh1076@rz.uni-freiburg.de]