In the project described in this chapter, discussions during group exams were analyzed to gain insight into how students make group decisions for their answers and the implications of their decision-making methods for deepening student understanding.

Describes the California Assessment Program's (CAP) group performance assessment task. Provides a sample task field test in world history, including written and culminating exercises. Suggests that such assessment exercises are popular with students and provide the teacher with an amalgam of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. (DK)

When one instructor began to use cooperative learning groups as a main teaching strategy in teacher education courses, she designed a large group oral exam format to take the place of traditional paper-and-pencil testing. The group oral exam format reduced text anxiety as there was no right or wrong response; it drew on both the cognitive and…

In introductory psychology courses, the desire to cover content can conflict with the desire to acquaint students with psychological thinking processes. The IDEAL method is a group problem solving quiz technique which addresses both of these goals. In the process, instructors choose key concepts from a given reading and divide the class into…

Students in a small group discussion class offered as part of a speech communication curriculum found that testing their knowledge of the theory of the course in small groups was a positive learning experience. Each self-selected test group was made up of three students and was formed at least two class periods prior to the exam. Time was given in…

The concept of cooperative goal structuring was examined, along with the effect of one cooperative learning technique (group consensus examinations) on the perceptions and achievement of college students. Cooperative goal structure exists when students perceive that they can obtain their goal only if the other students with whom they work also…

American education has always considered the non-standard or sub-standard form of speech used by children to be an imperfect copy of standard English. The defects of this approach have now become a matter of urgent concern in the face of the tremendous educational problems of the urban ghettos. This paper reverses the usual focus and looks…