The Need for Using Structured Cooperative Learning Strategies in Undergraduate Medical Education

Undergraduate medical education today encourages individualistic competitive environments. However, the current healthcare system promotes inter-professional teamwork. The foundation for professional teamwork is cooperation. To foster more cooperation among individuals, it is essential that students should be explicitly encouraged and must be made to interact together in teams and learn cooperatively. Cooperative learning (CL) is a carefully planned strategy that involves forming appropriate, sustained learning groups of interdependent members who have been assigned a specific goal. CL can be operationally defined in terms of six procedural elements: intentional grouping, continuity of group interaction, positive interdependence, individual accountability, development of social skills and group processing, which when implemented together, distinguish it from other forms of small-group learning in higher education. This paper gives an insight into the need for implementing CL in the current medical educational climate. Structured CL strategies provide a way to introduce innovative pedagogic strategies in an existing traditional curriculum.