Improving academic performance in higher education through cooperative learning

Abstract

Introduction. The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) proposes the improvement of the quality of teaching by promoting the student protagonism through the active learning. Objective. Enhancing the academic performance and the active learning of university students implementing cooperative learning strategies. Methodology. Convenience sampling, assessing the academic performance (e.g., qualifications), and the teamwork skills by using the Cooperative Learning Questionnaire (CLQ). For descriptive indices, correlations, and reliability, SPSS 20.0 was used, and for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), Mplus 8.4. Results. The academic performance was considerably improved compared to the last academic course. The CFA shows that the social skills and group processing dimensions were highly correlated, resulting in a four-dimensional model, unlike the original validation, with five dimensions. Conclusions. The implementation of cooperative learning improves the academic performance and teamwork skills, but it would be necessary to validate this questionnaire in other university settings to confirm our results.