USING COOPERATIVE LEARNING TO IMPROVE GENERIC SKILLS ACQUISITION IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Cooperative learning is increasingly being recognized as a technique for improving learning outcomes. Cooperative Learning has been defined as a relationship in a group of students that requires positive interdependence, individual accountability, interpersonal skills, face-to-face interaction, and processing. Several techniques have been used to implement advance learning with a number of methods that have delivered favourable results in students’ motivation, learning and skills acquisition. There are several reasons why cooperative learning works as well as it does. The idea that students learn more by doing something active than by simply watching and listening has long been known and cooperative learning is by its nature an active method. The purpose of this study is to determine if cooperative learning will improve university students' generic skills acquisition. In our study the group learning is a significant part of the course—where students work in groups a lot and a significant part of their grade is based on group work— it is helpful to explain to students the purpose of group work, goals for student learning, and why you have decided to orient your class around group learning. It’s important for students to understand the reasons for your choices, and recognize the differences between what they will experience in your class versus one with minimal group experiences. The data obtained is analyzed by means of descriptive data. The means and percentages were used to report gender, races and age data while the paired t-test was used to identify and analyze the differences of students' generic skills before and after attending the cooperative learning. The result of the study shows that the cooperative learning has improved four generic skills: solving problems; communicating ideas and information; planning and organizing activities. In conclusion, cooperative learning can be used as an instructional strategy at the university to improve students' generic skills. This work was supported by the University of Jaén (Spain), project PID34_201416