The research seems to support the importance of cooperative learning in the college classroom. I like the way the authors summed up the idea of cooperative learning by listing all the important aspects of cooperative learning such as active learning, solving problems together, and fostering learning outcomes. This type of learning certainly helps the students become more active in learning. 

I found your study to be interesting and was wondering some about the computer based instruction. The study showed the students in the cooperative groups faired better than the ones in the individualized computer instruction group.  Knowing some rationale for this would be interesting.  I know the friendliness and the interaction of cooperative groups do add to learning and make collaboration effective. It would interesting to know if other factors make a difference.  Would the results from a different set of students under different situations yield the same results? This certainly can be a springboard for more research and to test the results in other fields and course content.

The article does much to promote further thinking and to see the need for more research in this area.

First I would like to commend you on your methods and research design. I found your research both relevant and generalizable as it reinforced existing literature and suggested applications that are tangible and structured to achieve increased student performance.  I have a couple of suggestions that fall more to editing than to content. The first is that I did not see an introduction to the concept of ICI to the reader apart from the abstract until you use the acronym in your first research question.  In the introduction I found vague references such as "mostly prefer"   "generally" and "could make" to be distracting as there was no research offered to support these claims and they appeared to reflect opinion which diminishes the strength of your actual study.  Similarly, the last sentence of the first paragraph on page 3  "Now they can believe in themselves and be more  confident" seems to be a leap that has no support and neither confidence nor self-efficacy were not explored in your study.  Your research instrumentation was clear and easy to understand for replication. I am, however unsure the validation by "experts" of the 28-items of PMS. In order for me to have confidence to utilize your methodology/instrumentation in similar study I need more information on this validation process and the "experts" involved.  Next in your procedure section the procedure (i)  you noted in the last sentence that the group processing form allowed for the correction of any irregularities. This is a key piece, how and why did you adjust the data based on these findings? Was there a clear methodology? Might the existence of such irregularities be a limitation/area for further study?   Moving to page 12 for hypothesis 4 I believe there is a typo in the second sentence following table 5. I believe that it should read "The mean scores of the male students were 77.07 and MEAN 72.53 for the female students." Lastly, in your conclusion you state that "When friendliness is established, students are motivated to learn and are more confident to ask questions from one another for better understanding of the tasks being learnt." I did not note that your study mentioned friendliness or the impact on learning. Might it be better stated that "when a cooperative learning environment is established"?  Overall your research was well designed, the findings are very relevant in considering varying pedagogy and the outcomes challenge the current teaching models in Nigeria (and likely world-wide). Thank you for your submission!

Jennifer Jones Ed.D

Hellos IIsiaka, 

Thanks for a very interesting research study. Your research is solid. Your presentation of content is good but some of the wording in sentences was difficult for me to grasp on first read. I had to read some sentences two or three times before I felt that I understood the content and could move forward through the article. Some sentences were also rather long. Additional proof reading would be a recommendation. 

Another suggestion is to use some additional headings or subheading in the initial portion of  your paper to separate out content. There is so much robust information that it may help the reader follow the volume of the content and compartmentalize the content better having it split into topic areas. 

I also found a good explanation of co-operative learning in your first paragraph on page 4; yet this topic was introduced on page 1. I feel that I would have had a better overall understanding of what you meant by cooperative learning had this explanation been given prior to the discussion on cooperative learning.  

I also feel that linking cooperative learning and computer instructed technology together more tightly earlier in the paper would assist with the understanding of the significance of this for the overall paper. I would also be interested in what the students overall computer/technology skills were in this study. 

Finally, did you identify any limitations in your research? 

Your research was well designed, do you feel that these findings would generalize to other populations?

Thanks, 
LeAnne

This was a very interesting paper. Computer assistance is very popular in instructional design nowadays. It is also important for students to learn collaboratively to get a sense of what "real" situations will be like in their future careers. Your research was thorough and well-organized. Good job!