Abstract:

In the context of current education, cooperative group working is an essential element in all the activities of teaching for the reason that the student is also learning individual forms. Cooperative learning refers to the activity of small groups developed in the classroom. However, this type of learning is more than just teamwork by students; the idea behind it is simple: students create "small groups" after having received instructions from the teacher. Within each team students exchange information and work on a task until all members have understood and completed it, learning through collaboration. Comparing the results of this way of working with traditional learning models, we found that students learn more when they use cooperative learning, they remember longer the content, a higher part develop skills and critical thinking is developed. They also feel more confident themselves.

This work shows an experience lived at our university in which the students of the subject Advertising & Design of the second year of the degree in Industrial Design Engineering were introduced in a cooperative learning experience that was going beyond the classroom, because of being extended to another educational level. The university students, through the different work teams, took part in the implementation of an advertising campaign to promote a rake with charitable purposes organized by a school of childhood and primary education. This work provided important benefits to all those who were involved in it. For the university students, they were allowed to develop their skills of team working, collaboration, competition (to compete with other colleagues) in addition to provide them a strong motivation of the fact that the benefits of the market would be destined to the NGO Smara, Solidarity and Assistance for the Sahrawi People. For the school students, it allowed them to develop their sense of solidarity, cooperation, collaboration and the sense of responsibility (they were the ones who should make the decision of the winner advertising campaign of the event). Finally Smara NGO was benefited from the media coverage achieved with the event and from the momentary collection obtained by selling the products of the rake market realized by school and university students.

Keywords:

cooperative learning, University, preschool and primary education, Non-Governmental Organization (NGO).