Dear Dr. David Johnson,

I am currently a doctoral student in the Instructional Systems Technology program at Indiana University. I just completed an Alternative Instructional Strategies: Critical, Creative, Cooperative class with Dr. Curtis Jay Bonk. It was a fascinati ng class, taught in a quick, energized pace with an extensive quantity of techniques, theory, discussion, and application. It was especially interesting because it contained a broad mix of students, teachers at all levels, and graduate students, some who had already attempted various applications in their classrooms. However, despite all the discussion and reading, one problem continued to rise the surface, with no satisfactory answer. How does on evaluate cooperative learning? In a regular classroom situ ation, kindergarten through college, and even into the corporate world, evaluation is the driving factor. It should not be, but in the real world, at present, it is.

A group of the students who were most interested exchanged email addresses to set up a listserve to exchange information and further discussion. As we progressed throughout the class, the professor continually referred to the work of you and your broth er in the field of cooperative instruction. Your Five Elements of Cooperative Groups helped me to grasp the fundamental difference between group and cooperative learning. Therefore, I volunteered to write to you, and forward your response to the re st of the email group. The question we are most interested in having you address are:

• How does one evaluate cooperative learning (assign a grade)?
• How does one evaluate each member? Or does one?
• When evaluating the work, does one assign one grade to everyone in the group? How do I, and do I, differentiate among those who put forth effort and those who do not put forth effort?

We realize how busy you are. Yet you have done such inspiring work in the field of cooperative learning, in effect establishing a benchmark. We know you have addressed this need for evaluation. Please help us to come to grips with this aspect before we attempt to use it in our classes and instructional designs and must support how and why we chose to evaluate the progress of the students in a certain manner. Than you in advance for any information with which you can assist us.

Sincerely,

A student in P506 Summer 96