Cooperative Learning Online in Higher Education. Second Experience at Roma Tre University, Italy

This study presents the procedures and results of online cooperative learning activities carried out by the students in the a.y. 2013/14 in two academic courses at the Department of Education at Roma Tre University (Italy): “General Didactic” (GD), First-level Degree in Education Sciences and “Educational Strategies and New Communication Processes” (ES), Second-level Degree in Professional Community Educator. It constitutes the continuation of the first pilot study, carried out only in the teaching of GD in the academic year 2012/13 which has already been reported in a previous publication [1]; this second experience is built in a perspective of continuity and difference from the first one. This study is divided into two interventions: a) description and analysis of the data collected following the administration of a questionnaire, said barometer, developed to detect the climate experienced by the students involved in the online working groups; b) investigation of the relapse that collaborative activities produced on the performance. In particular, we observe that the average mark obtained in the exam of “General Didactics” by the students in cooperative is on average higher than others, and that in the first group there is less “sigma” compared to the second group.