Cooperative Learning in Higher Education Physics - A Systematic Literature Review

Due to the positive effects on students' performance and social skills, student-centered instructional strategies such as cooperative learning are increasingly used in higher education. Although cooperative learning has been studied extensively, often these studies cannot be applied to the context of higher education physics due to differences in the nature of the disciplines and educational levels. In order to highlight research focusing explicitly on higher education physics and thus enable physics instructors to take full advantage of cooperative learning, a review of recent research is necessary. Using three databases and including peer-reviewed journal articles published after 2010 that focused on cooperative learning in physics in higher education, a total of 50 articles were analysed to examine 1) what kind of cooperative learning strategies and 2) what kind of tasks have been used recently in the context of higher education physics, and 3) how the advantages of cooperative learning is justified. The results show that the two most common strategies, i.e. Learning Together and Group Investigation, covered most of the studies reviewed. The tasks given to students highlighted the experimental and conceptual nature of physics knowledge, even though many cooperative learning strategies were developed for different disciplinary contexts. Several arguments for the advantages of cooperative learning were identified, showing that although learning is an intraindividual process, the presence of peers and the external learning setting can also influence the outcome. Based on the findings, suggestions are made for future research and application of cooperative learning in higher education physics.