Effects of Informal Cooperative Learning and the Affiliation Motive on Achievement, Attitude, and Student Interactions.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of informal cooperative learning and the affiliation motive on achievement, attitude, and student interactions. Participants classified as high or low need for affiliation used either an informal cooperative learning strategy or an individual strategy while receiving information, examples, practice and feedback from an instructional television lesson. Results indicated that participants who used the individual strategy acquired significantly more knowledge from the lesson and indicated significantly more continuing motivation for working alone than those who used the informal cooperative strategy. Instructional strategy did not influence performance on the application portion of the test. Results also revealed that high affiliation participants expressed significantly more continuing motivation than low affiliation participants for working with another person. Low affiliation participants expressed significantly more continuing motivation than high affiliation participants for working alone. Finally, results indicated that high affiliation dyads exhibited significantly more on-task group behaviors (taking turns, sharing materials, group discussion of content) and significantly more off-task behaviors than low affiliation dyads. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.