Technology-supported cooperative learning in secondary education

After watching the results from electronic meeting systems (EMS) use in the business arena, educators are beginning to look at EMS as a tool for group learning. Many of the initial educational uses of EMS have been focused at the university level, and only a few school systems have put the technology to use in the public schools. The University of Arizona´s GroupSystems was installed at a local Tucson high school for the academic year 1994-1995. A junior-level English class at the school put it to a variety of tasks. These included prewriting brainstorming, answering lecture questions, writing letters and dialogues, and producing a research paper. Preliminary results indicate that the students in this particular class surpassed their peers in both cooperative (process) skills and writing (product) skills