A Look into the Future: Cooperative Learning, Culture, and COVID-19

It's no secret that cooperative learning provides a variety of learning opportunities for students beyond just academics. Authors Estes and Mintz (2016) describe several of these learning opportunities, including how to develop skills as simple as learning how to take turns, to more complex skills like time management and learning how to critique ideas separate from the person who is presenting the idea (p.183). All of these skills are necessary in real-world career environments, and employing this model in school settings is responsible practice for students' futures.

Photo: Christina @ wocintechchat.com

Generally, cooperative learning can be broken down into a few key elements: positive interdependence between group members, individual accountability, face-to-face interaction, social skills, and group processing (Estes & Mintz, 2016, p.184). While each of these elements is a necessary cog in the machine of cooperation, perhaps the focus on social skills and group processing is more important now than it ever was before.

Since the entrance of COVID-19-dictated remote schooling and working environments, globalization has become more of a reality than a theory. Zoom, Skype, Teams, FaceTime, and other video chat technology makes it possible to interact without occupying the same physical space no matter where you are in the world. Cloud-based workspaces making sharing documents and projects across the miles instantaneous. In short, when speaking about a globalized society, our technology is already in place...but are our social skills?

American & Arab students studying Chinese together.

Take for instance, our current COVID-19 remote working environment. How many stories have circulated recently about individuals who have been caught without pants during a work call? Or even worse, have been caught using the restroom? Yikes. Something tells me our social skills need to catch up with our technology. But these social skills can't just include simple netiquette alone (I beg you, please be fully dressed for every video conference). They must include the more complex social skills of being able to cooperate cross-culturally.

According to a recent study about collaboration between students of different cultures, author Archana Shirvastava (2019) noted, "one of the biggest challenges people face is that they don't have a clear sense of context and the situation of co-workers" (p.53). Similarly, the author asserts,"leaders have to be attuned to the social dynamics for the efficient achievement of the task at hand. A cohesive group is a high performing group" (Shrivastava, 2019, p.53). These assertions point to the fact that cooperative learning in the classroom needs to be more than simply learning how to take turns and managing time. Post COVID-19 cooperative learning approaches in the classroom must include how to acknowledge other cultural perspectives, values, work habits, and social dynamics in order to more realistically replicate career-based working environments and real-life Problem-Based Learning.

After students worked in a collaborative, cross-cultural environment, Shrivastava (2019) summarized the findings of the study as follows:

"The students learnt to understand, that an answer to a specific question might

correspond to their expectations now for one specific contact group, but might be

different tomorrow or for someone else. In this student based activity, the students

designed most of their own learning experience which enabled them to perceive the

similarities and differences between there views, their expectations and the reaction of

the other side on a very personal level." (p.53)

Working together closely on a student-designed project (as opposed to teacher-designed) allowed these students to wrestle with the cross-cultural realities of the tasks at hand, and the result was a personal level of learning that was much deeper than what would have been realized from a cursory overview provided by some written source, void of the actual interpersonal interaction. The key to adjusting the cooperative learning model to better allow for cross-cultural learning is to eliminate the role of the teacher as designer of a project or moderator of a curriculum. Instead, the teacher must occupy the role

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWEwv_qobpU

of fellow learner, open to experiencing new ways of cross-cultural cooperation. Without this approach, learners may fall victim to a situation where a teacher or curriculum "that does not take particular account of the learners' Indigenous worldview risks destroying the framework through which the learner is likely to interpret concepts" (Le Grange, 2019, p.238). In other words, teachers may unintentionally eliminate the cross-cultural component of cooperative learning if the design of the project or curriculum aims more toward an assimilation of views rather than a diversity of views.

It is important to note, however, that diversity alone is not what creates cross-cultural cooperation. Diversity may include a variety of different representation of individuals, but those individuals may all come from within the same cultural context, and thus still have mono-cultural interpretations of the work at hand. Authors Lourenco, Dimas, and Rebelo (2014) note, "[c]ontrary to diversity, the team's cultural orientation towards learning seems to be a strong determinant of...effectiveness" (p.130). For example, many Westerners tend to be time oriented and individualistic. In a diverse yet mono-cultural group context, it would be quite acceptable for all members of a group to divide work among the individual group members, agree upon a timeframe within which the work must be completed, and set a time to reconvene in order to compile the individual work together. Not much cross-cultural learning is taking place in this example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhA9eypocE0

But what happens if that mono-cultural group shifts to add a member from a different cultural background, one that values collective thinking and views time as an expendable resource? It is likely that this group member would struggle to complete a task individually, and would likely pay very little attention to timeframes. How will the group wrestle with the reality of having to develop a different approach to the project entirely, one that takes into account the differing cultural approaches of the group members? In a post-COVID-19 reality, these are the types of cooperative learning experiences that will matter most.

It's time to adjust our previous models of instruction to account for today's (and tomorrow's) reality.

References:

Bourrelle, J.S. (2017, October). Learn a new culture. [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhA9eypocE0

Edutopia. (2012, December 5). Collaborative learning builds deeper understanding. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWEwv_qobpU

Estes, T., & Mintz, S. (2016). Instruction: A models approach, 7th edition. https://www.amazon.com

Le Grange, L. (2019). Rethinking learner-centred education: Bridging knowledge cultures. Africa Education Review 16(6), 229-245. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/18146627.2018.1464642

Lourenco, P.R., Dimas, I.D., & Rebelo, T. (2014). Effective workgroups: The role of diversity and culture. Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 30(2014), 123-132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rpto.2014.11.002

Shirvastava, A. (2019). Using collaborative project fore learning effective ways of working harmoniously with people from different cultures. International Journal of Marketing and Business Communication 8(1), 47-54. http://publishingindia.com/ijmbc/49/using-collaborative-project-for-learning-effective-ways-of-working-harmoniously-with-people-from-different-cultures/808/5625/