The Impact of Cooperative Learning on Female Medical Students’ Happiness and Social Support

Abstract

Cooperative learning has appeared as a new approach to teaching. This approach is utilized for small heterogeneous groups of students who cooperate to achieve a common goal. This study aimed at investigating the impact of cooperative learning on female medical students’ happiness and social support. To this end, 72 female students of medicine at Shiraz Medical School were selected using cluster sampling and divided into experimental and control groups. The students were administered social support and happiness questionnaires as a pre-test. The same questionnaires were administered to them at the end of the term as a post-test. The students in the experimental group were taught to use cooperative learning strategies and the students in the control group followed the traditional approach. Data were analyzed using SPSS. The statistical procedures used for analyzing the data were mean, standard deviation, and multivariate analysis of covariance. The findings of the study indicated that cooperative learning had a significant impact on the level of happiness and social support of students compared to the conventional approach.