James L. Cooper

It is an honor to write about Jim Cooper, who was such a good friend and wonderful mentor to not only me, but many other colleagues at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). Jim earned his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at the University of Iowa and joined the College of Education in 1974 teaching research methods and curriculum and instruction classes in the Division of Graduate Education. His scholarly focus was on research and writing about cooperative and collaborative learning in higher education, which continued during his participation in the Faculty Early Retirement Program, which ended in 2012. During his 38 years at CSUDH, he wrote more than 70 chapters, monographs and articles about research-based teaching and learning in higher education across multiple disciplines, including psychology, education, science, technology, and mathematics. I was privileged to have been a co-writer for a few of those articles. 

Jim also served as the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and coordinated the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning program at CSUDH. He was awarded both the Outstanding Teacher and the Outstanding Professor awards at CSUDH. Currently we have two of Jim’s former students who are faculty members in the College of Education; one is the former Dean, who just retired last year, but continuing to teach. Although I was never a student of Jim’s, I certainly learned the majority of what I know about good teaching from him.

I met Jim about 30 years ago when I was a psychology graduate student he hired to analyze data for his FIPSE grant studying the impact of cooperative learning in higher education. I had no idea how that first meeting with Jim would change my life. I had never heard of cooperative learning and had no plan to teach. But thanks to Jim, I have had a wonderful career at CSUDH. He was a truly remarkable, hard-working educator and friend who spent his life focused on improving learning in higher education. I have said many times to many people, including my students, that I was very lucky to have met Jim before I was asked to teach my first statistics class, but my students were even luckier because I had him as a mentor who kindly and very gently asked me how I was going to teach. The focus at that time in psychology classes was on lecture only and most often multiple-choice tests using the then high, tech scantron sheets. Instead of teaching how I was taught, I had access to Jim’s guidance and resources of the best and most current information about how to teach using student-centered methods (cooperative learning), instead of teacher-centered lectures.

In addition to Jim’s focus on cooperative learning research, writing, and mentoring young colleagues across the campus, he had many non-academic activities including watching the CSUDH baseball players practice and on-campus games. He also loved playing tennis with other campus faculty, watching sports (often on 3 TVs at the same time—something I never quite understood) and going to museums and the theater. He also loved to travel and especially enjoyed guided trips with themes, like western art museums, or steamboat cruises. Until his feet started giving him to much trouble he loved to take walking tours and shopping open air markets in San Pedro. He had nice small collection of decorative Italian wine jugs that he enjoyed displaying on his bookshelves. 

I and the many others who benefitted from Jim’s friendship, work ethic and mentorship will miss him greatly. 

I first met Jim in 1990 in Washington, D.C where we were attending a meeting for new FIPSE Grant recipients. My three-year grant was for research on classroom observations. Jim’s—to my delight—was to study the impact of cooperative learning in higher education. As it happened, I was a recent passionate convert to cooperative learning, thanks to Neil Davidson, a mathematics educator at The University of Maryland, adjacent to my sister campus of The university of Maryland University College. Over our three years with FIPSE, I had the opportunity to get to know both Jim and his innovative work with cooperative learning. Jim briefly described this work in his introductory note to his ground-breaking anthology, Small Group Instruction in Higher Education: Lessons from the Past, Visions of the Future:

With that {FIPSE} funding I was able to document the power of group learning in a number of college classrooms at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and feeder community colleges. Classes taught with cooperative learning demonstrated significant gains in critical thinking, general academic achievement and several attitudinal measures-

I was utterly delighted when Jim co-sponsored the first national conference dedicated to cooperative and collaborative learning where I met for the first time fellow practitioners whose work I had long admired and also met previously unknown adherents to this innovative pedagogy. 

I was even more pleased when in December 1990 Jim started the long-running (until 1999) newsletter Cooperative Learning and College Teaching. I was happy not only to subscribe to it—eagerly reading each issue, initially four pages and finally 16—when it arrived, but also contributing articles whenever I could. Through this newsletter, and in many other ways, Jim did more than almost anyone to popularize cooperative learning in higher education. 

During our long-time association—and friendship—Jim and I had many discussions about cooperative learning at conferences and during presentations I made at his home campus. Jim was a wonderful host and a caring friend. He always took me around San Pedro, including boat trips. As others have noted, he had a compelling sense of humor. He was possibly the kindest and gentlest man I have ever known. I was stunned when I learned of Jim’s death. The world is a less vibrant place without him. 

Jim Cooper and I met at a workshop on Classroom Assessment Techniques led by Tom Angelo in the late 1980s. We immediately discovered our mutual interests in small-group learning. Our first conversations focused on the public nature of learning when, in cooperative groups, the learning is “live, on-the-air, bloopers and all,” as Jim put it.   Consequently, simply through close observation, faculty members can discern a great deal about what’s going on with their students’ learning. Therefore, classroom assessment techniques need to probe both students’ individual learning and the community’s learning and wellbeing as well. 

In succeeding years and decades, Jim and I connected at various conferences and shared experiences working with both our students and with colleagues in faculty development workshops. In the latter settings, questions often surfaced around, “All well and good when you have small classes, say 30 or fewer students.  How do you set up cooperative learning in larger classes of 60 or 100, or even more?” 

These questions prompted Jim, Karl Smith, Pamela Robinson, and me to embark on a book project: we would interview about 75 faculty members around the country who were successfully engaging large classes in cooperative learning and then discuss what we learned via conference call—this was before the age of Zoom!  The results of those interviews became Strategies for Energizing Large Classes: From Small Groups to Learning Communities in Jossey-Bass’s New Directions in Teaching & Learning Series. 

My strongest memories of Jim spring from that collaboration: his modesty, his deep regard for students, his willingness to work through puzzling questions, and his ready sense of humor. What a privilege to have had such a supportive colleague. 

If you need it:  At The Evergreen State College, Jean MacGregor was a co-creator of the Washington Center for Undergraduate Education, known for its leadership work in curricular learning communities. She also taught in the college’s Master of Environmental Studies program. 

I appreciate the beautiful recollections of Jim by Pamela, Jean, and Barbara.

As they said, Jim was well-liked and respected by everyone who knew him,

especially by his colleagues in higher education, including me.  I had the

good fortune to know Jim for over thirty years.  

Jim showed strong and continuing leadership in cooperative learning in higher

education through his newsletter, publications, networking, and conference 

organizing.  I vividly remember one conference where he organized a program 

on small group learning with a number of high-powered contributors.  It was 

one of the most stimulating professional events in which I had the opportunity 

to participate.  

In his professional writing, Jim was adept in theoretical issues about cooperative

and collaborative learning.  It was a pleasure to work with Jim, and colleagues Matthews

and Hawkes, on a paper entitled "Building bridges between cooperative and

collaborative learning."

Jim and his favorite coauthor Pamela Robinson wrote several books using the

label "small group learning."  Because of confusion in the literature, they "have

chosen to use the terms small-group instruction and small-group learning as

umbrella terms to encompass both cooperative and  cooperative learning."

Going beyond these theoretical distinctions, they developed two powerful 

procedures, Quick-Thinks and cognitive scaffolding, to enhance student

success in varied small group procedures.  (See their chapter in a double 

journal issue on  "Small group learning in higher education," of the Journal 

of Excellence in College Teaching in 2014.)  As co-editor, with Major and 

Michaelsen, I greatly enjoyed working with Jim and Pamela on their

significant chapter. 

Jim will be greatly missed not only for his major professional contributions

but as a kind, gentle person with a good sense of humor and a passionate 

commitment to improving higher education.