Enhancing college students’ Critical thinking skills in cooperative groups

Abstract

This study examines the effects of cooperative learning interventions on college students’ critical thinking (CT) development. It presents the results of an investigation in which 19 students were assigned to work in a cooperative learning (experimental group) context, and 22 other students (control group) followed a lecture-based learning process. The development of the students’ critical thinking skills was subsequently assessed with a pre- and post-test. The results showed greater improvements in critical thinking skills among the students of the intervention group suggesting clearly that the effects of cooperative learning are very positive.