Testing Jigsaw Learning Against a Traditional Lecture

Oppenheimer said "The best way to learn is to teach." 1 Mazur found that "Nothing clarifies ideas better than explaining them to others." 2 Using this philosophy, Jigsaw Learning, 3 is a peerto-peer teaching method developed by Elliot Aronson in which every student teaches something that they have learned from one study group to another group of students.During class, the faculty breaks a course topic into different assignments and the class into the same number of study groups.The study groups each contain an equal number of students.Each group is given an assignment to read, discuss and finally decide how they will serve as instructors on their topic.The faculty visits each group to discuss the topic and answer questions.After this study period, new jigsaw learning groups are formed that contain a representative from each of the original study groups, thereby bringing all of the course topics together in one group.Each representative is asked to instruct their group on what they have learned.The groups are then disbanded and the class is reunited for review and to answer remaining questions in order to guarantee correct understanding.The goal of this paper is to test Jigsaw Learning against a traditional lecture as a teaching technique on the same topic for freshmen Architecture and Construction Management students who have been benchmarked using a prior test.The test group is given the Jigsaw Learning method, while the control group is given a lecture on the same topic.The timeframe for the exercise is the same for both groupsi.e. one hour of a class that is nearly 3 hours in durationand immediately following, both groups were given the same test on the topic.The results of this study will provide faculty with an understanding of the relative benefit of the initial implementation of Jigsaw Learning into their courses.