COOPERATIVE LEARNING, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: AN EXPERIENCE IN THE FIELD

When we talk about school leavers we refer to all cases of school dropout and late in training and, more generally, to the various forms of school failure due to inadequate learning in relation to students’ intellectual potential. Recent monitoring carried out nationally and internationally have also highlighted the strong roots of school teacher lesson in everyday educational practice. The latest international survey on teaching and learning (TALIS, 2008) shows a certain predilection for traditional teaching methods marked with lectures and teaching verbal style. In Italy, then, from the results of monitoring of Indicazioni Nazionali (art. 1, c. 4 DPR 89/2009) published on 4/2/2012 (http://hubmiur.pubblica.istruzione.it/web/istruzione/prot2085_12), shows that in 76% of schools (4,436 detection attended educational institutions between all institutions and educational circles totaling 60,084 classes) the most popular teaching mode is the lesson.
The choice to create an experimental work to verify the influence of Cooperative Learning on learners ' performance (Kagan, 1992; Davis, 1993; Cohen, 1994) resulted from these considerations and, above all, by the high number of early school leavers (in the past year, were over 434 thousand) mainly related to educational failure (lived both as unsatisfactory results in terms of performance rather than lack of interest towards the activities and modalities for the structuring of the same). With the survey, it was decided to examine whether, in practice, speaking about the organization of teaching you can improve the performance of students. The aim of the research was to provide answers to the following question: is it possible to obtain an improvement of student learning by fostering cooperative learning through the use of the interactive whiteboard (LIM)?
In the research have been involved 62 students ( 13 years old) attending the third class of the first grade of secondary school. The experimental path was done in about two months and the results have corroborated the initial hypothesis. Cooperative work and the use of digital technologies affect positively pupils school performance, on individual and group responsibility, on the development of social skills; it provides a good climate for individual student’s learning. With this experimentation we have also been able to verify how the communication between the students, as result of a negotiation and progressive and continuous sharing, is greatly improved. This is an aspect that should be supported in every educational context. The communicative relationship that is established (Comoglio, 2000; Kanizsa, 2007; Cacciamani, 2008) was the fundamental and decisive characteristic to achieve our goals.
Cooperative learning is more than just working in groups: students must be interdependent, interact each other, be individually accountable, and use interpersonal skills (Blosser, 1992).
In order to obtain best learning results it is essential to intervene on the organization of the educational setting and relational dynamics.
According to the research, cooperative learning can greatly enhance learning, but not in all circumstances. Teachers need training and practice in using cooperative learning in an effective way.