DEVELOPING STUDENTS' TEAMWORK SKILLS THROUGH COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

The life of people around the world is becoming more closely, deeply and directly interconnected than ever before.

In today’s society, globalization makes it necessary for people of any sex, race, native language, religion, and culture to learn to live and work together.

The ability to work effectively as a team member is a requirement of employers to technical university graduates and they expect universities to provide their students with this skill.

This paper presents the results of a study on the role of collaborative learning strategies in developing students’ teamwork skills which are supposed to improve academic achievements of students.

We have studied the relationship between students' teamwork performance and their academic achievements. The research has shown that collaborative learning positively influences student motivation, therefore student achievement increase.

Pedagogical experiments were carried out in a natural teaching and learning situation involving several groups of technical students. The test groups consisted of students from five countries speaking different native languages.

The teamwork skills developed through collaborative learning strategies were assessed with the help of tests, observation, surveys, and mathematical statistics methods, both qualitative and quantitative data being taken into account.