Covariant Factors of Activity-Oriented Curriculum Operation in Cooperative Learning Effectiveness

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the operation of an activity-oriented curriculum. Class members were grouped by their majors to complete an academic seminar together and fill in the evaluation for the two variables of cooperative learning and participation attitude, so that this study could explore the relationship between covariate factors for cooperative learning effectiveness. The subjects of this study are the master students in the Department of Visual Communication Design of a university of science and technology in central Taiwan. The course is a required course seminar. In order to properly arrange the manpower, the nominal variables in research design were formed by grouping through professional division of labor. The research tools include cooperative learning evaluation and participation attitude evaluation. The data were obtained through the questionnaire about the two variables. The two-factor covariate analysis was used to test the hypothesis. The results showed that the cooperative learning effectiveness did not vary according to the grouping type when the co-variable interference of participation attitude was excluded. It was found that the academic group had the best evaluation among all groups. Therefore, it was concluded that the students in the master class, due to their mature mental development, were generally able to put themselves in the membership’s position and pay attention to team efficiency in the learning environment of team cooperation, so as to gather the centripetal force from the group to the whole class, and jointly complete the task assigned by the course. Among the groups, the academic group had few members but heavy works. Due to proper division of labor, they completed the task on time, and the experience of being responsible for the administrative processing of the academic paper was profound, which led to the best evaluation of the cooperative learning effectiveness. Due to limited number of members, this study also received many suggestions during the review meetings, which aided in facilitating successful implementations of the subsequent course activities and enabling students to gain practical experiences from this activity.