Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, Volume 7, Number 1

Although the idea of collaboration and cooperation in education is hardly new, the use of two specific pedagogies, collaborative learning and cooperative learning, has rapidly grown in prominence during this decade. These two approaches to teaching are often confused because of the similarities in their names. Collaborative learning is the broader concept and may encompass any kind of collaboration between students as well as various other forms of collaboration, such as team-taught courses, learning community models, and other interactions between faculty and students. Many regard cooperative learning as a more structured, and hence more focused, form of collaborative learning. Others view collaborative learning and cooperative learning as lying on a continuum, with collaborative learning being the least structured and cooperative learning the most structured.