Cooperative pair problem solving: a strategy for problem solving tutorials in the engineering sciences

Abstract

Engineering science courses, such as Thermodynamics, are often seen as difficult, and students have difficulty understanding the concepts and solving the problems. In an effort to improve the situation, we developed a well-structured, cooperative teachinglearning strategy, Cooperative Pair Problem Solving (CPPS), suitable for large groups (more than one hundred students) for implementation during tutorial sessions. CPPS will be of interest to educators already making use of tutorial sessions where students solve problems under the guidance of the lecturer and/or assistants. For educators expecting students to solve problems on their own, as homework, CPPS presents a viable alternative strategy to harness the proven advantages of Cooperative Learning. This article describes the procedure we followed with the implementation of CPPS during the tutorials. It further reports on the extent to which we were able to structure the five elements of CL and the effect this had on the tutorials. The study was performed at two universities in South Africa. The population comprised the second-year engineering students taking their first course in Thermodynamics—in total, approximately 400 students in three groups. The students and assistants completed questionnaires and two observers were asked to attend tutorials and report on their observations. There was almost universal agreement that CPPS led to effective cooperation between the students. From the questionnaires, it was clear that positive interdependence was sufficiently structured into the procedure. The majority of students engaged in promotive interaction and took responsibility to complete the task. The students possessed sufficient social skills to work effectively together, and group processing was effected by letting the groups grade their own work. It was found that an effective group formation procedure is vital for the successful implementation of CPPS otherwise students tend to sit with friends, and positive interdependence and promotive interaction suffer. Although CPPS was developed in a Thermodynamics environment, we are convinced that it can also be implemented successfully in other engineering science and even pure science courses where instructors want to implement CL during problem solving tutorials