Collaboration is accentuated as one of the critical 21st-century skills students need to learn to be best prepared for their future professional and social lives. One reason for the emphasis on collaboration is that today's workplace is structured with teamwork as the basic structure (Deepa & Seth, 2013). A recent study focusing on 21st-century skills for higher education students in EU countries found that employees consider collaboration/teamwork skills one of the essential soft skills that graduates need (Crosta et al.,2023). In higher education, the focus on group learning to learn and develop collaboration skills is growing, and there is a wealth of different approaches, such as cooperative, collaborative, problem-based, and team-based learning (Davidson & Major,2014).

Cooperative learning (CL) is a pedagogical model that can support facilitators of learning to structure students working in small groups for academic and social gains. It is described as an instructional use of small groups where students work together to maximize their learning and others (Johnson et al., 2008). The pedagogical model has a long history and an extensive research base demonstrating its effects (Kyndt et al.,2013; Slavin 2015). Cooperative learning is proposed as suitable for improving university instruction as it is based on validated theory to mediate effective collaboration where the students learn through collaboration and learn to collaborate (Johnson et al., 2014). It is found that CL at the university level is effective for developing students' social skills necessary for teamwork (Mendo-Lázaro et al., 2018).

Johnson et al. (2014) accentuate a conceptual CL approach suitable for improving university instruction. The conceptual approach is based on social interdependence theory (Deutch, 1949), and five validated essential elements must be structured into the learning situation to mediate effective collaboration. The five elements are to ensure the group and its members have positive interdependence, individual accountability, promotive interaction, appropriate use of social skills, and group processing (Johnson et al.,2014). The social interdependence theory, the five elements, and suggested CL procedures provide an integrated system for teachers to organize and design learning in small groups.

Despite the established benefits for students' learning, CL is considered complex, and teachers encounter difficulties implementing the method (Ghaith, 2018; Sharan, 2010). Besides, different group learning approaches are already used in university settings to organize students` working together. Instead of teachers implementing an integrated CL system to organize and design learning in small groups, we believe there is a potential for teachers to inquire into their existing group learning and teamwork practices through the lens of the five elements of CL. It is argued that understanding the five elements allows CL procedures to be designed and, in this way, gives faculty tools to support learning in groups (Johnson et al., 2014).

To our knowledge, there is limited research on how the five elements of CL can be used as a reflective tool to inquire into their existing instructional use of group learning and teamwork in higher education. Often, the focus is on implementing the pedagogical model with a focus on specific methods and CL structures. We believe there is an untapped potential for extending and applying CL as a theory in higher education by inquiring into existing group learning and teamwork practice with a reflective lens using the five elements of CL to support the development of collaboration and teamwork skills.  

In this research paper, we explore:

In what ways can the theoretical model of cooperative learning as a reflective lens be used to support the facilitation of teamwork in higher education?

This study utilized a workshop as a research methodology (Ørngreen & Levinsen, 2017). The workshop was designed for a research purpose to inquire into how the five elements of CL could be used as a reflective tool to support the facilitation of teamwork in higher education. Besides, the workshop was authentic and aimed to meet participants' expectations of getting more knowledge about CL and inquiry into their own facilitation of teamwork to contribute to local practice. The workshop included ten participants from the central academic section of Experts in Teamwork (EiT) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Experts in Teamwork is a mandatory master course (7,5 ECTS), with around 3000 students taking the course each year. In the course, students work in interdisciplinary teams to address real-life problems; the course is based on experiential learning and developing students' teamwork skills. The central academic section of EiT is responsible for developing the course and providing professional development for academic staff responsible for teaching the course (Walin et al., 2017). The workshop was organized inspired by the CL structure Jigsaw puzzle (Aronson et al., 1978) to give the participants first-hand experiences on how CL works and, at the same time, learn about the five elements of CL and reflect on how these elements were present in the professional development and course they oversaw. The data collected was material developed for the workshop and a research journal with participatory observations and reflections from the first author who developed and facilitated the workshop. Individual interviews with five workshop participants were conducted to gain further insights into the participants' experiences. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and the data collected is in the analysis process using reflective thematic analyses (Braun & Clark, 2021). The first author in this study is positioned as an insider researcher conducting research in her own organization, as she worked in the EiT academic section. It is proposed that insider research benefits from collaborations with external facilitators to reflect and extend the meaning of the experiences during the research (Coghlan & Brannick, 2014). With her CL and professional development expertise, the second author was invited into the project to inquire about the experiences and data collected. Our collaboration provided an opportunity for researcher triangulation, and our different perspectives enhanced our understanding of in what ways CL as a reflective framework could strengthen facilitation of teamwork of higher education.

In this paper, we explore how the theoretical model of CL as a reflective lens can support the facilitation of teamwork to contribute to more knowledge of CL in higher education. This research paper presentation provides a practical contribution that may be of direct use to researchers and educators. It describes how the workshop was developed and structured together with the participants' experiences and their reflections of CL and their own practice with providing professional development and course in teamwork. Preliminary findings indicate that learning about the five elements of CL and then inquiring into their practice individually, in pairs, and in groups was found to facilitate the participants to examine their own practice critically. The participants were unfamiliar with the five elements of CL beforehand; however, learning about them gave the participants a shared lens and language about collaboration that enabled them to discuss strengths and weaknesses in their professional development and course. This led to ideas about how they could further develop their professional development and course. For example, it was found that individual accountability when structuring teamwork could be further strengthened. In many ways, the workshop became a meta-reflection on their existing practice without implementing CL as an integrated system. This shows the potential of CL's five essential elements as a reflection tool to support existing teamwork in higher education. The findings also show that the combination of learning about CL structured through the CL-structure Jigsaw made the participants in the workshop positive interdependent and individual accountable in their learning and reflection and led to a promotive interaction. This way, they got a first-hand experience of CL's pedagogical model. This was also found to motivate the participants to further want to CL structures and how they could be adapted to the professional development they provided.

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