Philippine E-Journals

The Effectiveness of Cooperative Learning Method in Teaching Integral Calculus

Giovanni L. Palomares

Discipline: Mathematics, Education, Study and Teaching

 

Abstract:

One of the subjects found to be difficult by freshmen and sophomore students in college is mathematics.

Students who have not mastered their high school mathematics also tend to fail. During classroom discussions in calculus subjects, it was observed that when the lecture method was used, students normally do not understand the topics being discussed, they will not have anything to write on their paper when given written exercises and graded seatwork.

 

Teaching strategies play an important factor for students to cope up with and learn more in mathematics. This led to the study of a teaching strategy that may help students in coping with classroom discussions. The teaching strategy is cooperative learning.

 

The study sought to find out the effectiveness of cooperative learning in teaching Integral Calculus. The study was conducted to the second year students taking up Integral Calculus during the second semester of the school year 2006-2007. There were two groups of respondents – the controlled group and the experimental group. The two groups were both given a pre-test and a posttest.