Cooperation in Bits and Bytes

How the software/activity is used:

Students enlarge wordprocessing and critical thinking skills by completing cooperative learning tasks on computers. Clarisworks or other software that also has a spreadsheet environment can be used.

In this demonstration we will see how students work in pairs to gather information displayed on different computer monitors to resolve a billing and order problem in a small business. After discussing the problem, students work individually to write a letter that addresses the problem adequately.

Procedure:

One half of the class reads a memo about an order to a food company. The other students see an invoice. These documents are displayed on two computer montiors. Students read and remember without taking notes.

Students then report back a partner and ask questions to learn what the "problem" is. (They uncover that the order and the invoice do not match.)

After they learn the details of the problem, the students make a plan for dealing with the problem.

Individually, students compose a new letter to describe their solution.

Strengths:

The cooperative activity helps students integrate listening, reading, thinking and writing skills as they discover and resolve a problem that occurs at times in many workplaces. After completing this learning task, students could be presented with more diverse problem solving activities in the same manner.

Limitations:

Students should have previous experience with collaborative work done in computer class environments for an activity like this to proceed successfully.