Positive and Negative Cooperative Learning Experiences

When I was a freshman in high school I had a great cooperative learning experience. I was in biology class and at the end of the year we had to dissect frogs...yuck! I seriously did not want to do it, frogs are cute and all and I sure as heck didn't want frog guts all over me. Luckily my lab partner, Wayne, and I had been working together all year long and we discussed what parts we would each do for the lab. He got to dissect the frog (yay for him...) and I got to record the notes during the dissection, which he really didn't want to do. I observed the entire dissection process and helped him (somewhat reluctantly) when needed. This was great because we both got to do the parts of the lab that we wanted to without the lab being compromised.

When I was a senior in high school I had a horrible cooperative learning experience. In AP Statistics we had to do a project in pairs that involved surveying other students and analyzing the data in a paper and brief presentation. We both collected the data together and combined our results. However, the night before the paper was due I had a sinking feeling that my partner had forgotten all about it and wasn't going to do his part. So I wrote the entire paper just in case that happened. The next day I come to find out that it was a good thing I wrote the paper because just as I had feared, he didn't write his part. Since I was naive and didn't want to piss anybody off I put both of our names on the paper and didn't even tell the teacher what had happened and we presented "our" work together.