Using cooperative teaching techniques in engineering courses. The Jigsawcase

Students everywhere are increasingly expecting to learn content that is immediately relevant to the degree they are preparing for. The negative implication of this is that they generally lack the motivation to study the fundamentals and understand in-depth material that they may not yet see the use for. Based on our previous experience with inquiry-based learning methodologies, and given the course content and the number of students in class we felt that a collaborative inquiry-based approach would encourage students to actively participate in their learning, motivate them to learn differently than in traditional ways, and inspire them to share information with their classmates. Results using the Jigsaw methodology show that some of the more positive effects were teamwork and "being forced to understand and prepare well enough to be able to explain clearly to your colleagues". On the negative side, some students found the number of presentations to be excessive and some thought that they knew less about the material that they had not prepared themselves than they would have known had they followed a traditional teaching method.