Collection

2017 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Steven M. Ciccarelli, Rochester Institute of Technology

the goals of the group. Social skills, such as verbalcommunications, conflict resolution, group decision making and leadership, require groupmembers have certain abilities that are enacted so as to allow the group members tocommunicate and work with each other. Finally, group processing requires periodic reflection bygroup members to consider how the group is functioning and the entire learning process. Johnsonand colleagues contend that these five basic characteristics are essential elements of cooperativelearning.Several studies describe the benefits of cooperative learning including: more positive studentattitudes about the learning process and subject matter compared to alternate learning modes11 ,improved academic achievement7, 12, 13

Collection

2017 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Edward T. Davis, Queensborough Community College, CUNY; Tony Monahan, Queensborough Community College, CUNY

students are extremely limited.Service-learning Service Learning has been defined as, “an instructional method that combines communityservice with classroom instruction, focusing on critical reflective thinking as well as personal andcivic responsibility” (Robinson, 1999, p. 1). Research demonstrates the numerous positiveimpacts of academic service-learning: improvement of academic achievement across disciplinesincluding those of students who require remediation and those engaged in career and technical(CTE) majors; attainment of general education objectives and workplace skills such as criticalthinking, teamwork, and problem solving; increased student retention; and cognitive and attitudedevelopment (Eyler & Giles, 1997; Astin et al