Introduction

Welcome to Cooperative Learning in an Online Environment (CLOE) mini-course. In this course we will be exploring different teaching strategies and how they can be adapted to the online environment. The course will last for 3 weeks, and as participants you are expected to interact at least three times per week to encourage cooperation. Try to complete:

• Activity #1 in each section by Tuesday of the week,
• #2 by Thursday, and
• #3 by Saturday, so we can start a new week on Sunday.

In this first week, we will be exploring the basic principles of cooperative/collaborative learning. We will be doing a group activity to reach a consensus on what constitutes a "best practice" for online learning collaboration. As a group, we will create a rubric to measure some strategies for both collaboration, and their adaptability to the online environment.

During the second week, we will be using a "divide & conquer" method to evaluate several strategies being utilized in the face to face and online classrooms. We will utilize the rubric created in week one to evaluate such activities, and create a chart that clearly shows the strategies strengths and weaknesses.

During the third week, we will utilize our rubric to grade our own courses' activities, as well as grading teammates on their participation.

In preparation for this course, access the Nova Webdrive (go to http://webdrive.huizenga.nova.edu/ ) and be sure that you have access to it. You should be able to enter it with your Nova login and password. If you have difficulty, please contact the help desk. We will be using this tool to pass files back and forth. Once registration is complete, the rubric template will be added to the webdrive and you should have access to it. You should be able to download the file, add your data to it, and reupload it for everyone else to access.

Ok, so it's on to the tasks for Week 1.....