This volume contains material on research based teaching techniques for use in higher education. The focus is on small group learning procedures. None of this material has previously appeared in book form. Twenty of the articles first appeared in the Cooperative Learning and College Teaching newsletter that Jim Cooper and Pamela Robinson edited from 1990 to 1999. These articles address applications of small group learning within a variety of academic disciplines. Authors of the articles in this work include David and Roger Johnson, Karl Smith, Joe Cuseo, Susan Prescott Johnston, Spencer Kagan, Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz, Richard Felder, Barbara Millis and Lisa Gray-Shellberg. Twelve chapters, never before published, were solicited for this volume. Some of these works focus on research and theory in active and small group learning and others address more applied group work in teaching and learning in the college classroom. The chapters are more comprehensive than the newsletter articles and include contributions by David and Roger Johnson, Karl Smith, Spencer Kagan, Barbara Millis, Joe Cuseo, Susan Prescott Johnston, Cynthia Desrochers, Mark Maier, Philip Abrami and Donald Bligh. Topics treated in the new chapters contain recent work in brain-based learning, critical thinking, student engagement, information technology, distance education, and learning communities. Readers of the 2003 book edited by Jim, Pamela and David Ball, Small Group Instruction in Higher Education: Lessons from the Past, Visions of the Future, will want to add this text to their libraries, since none of the material in the current volume appeared in the 2003 book or the 2009 second edition.

The second edition of this title represents a compilation of work completed by Jim Cooper and his colleagues in the Network for Cooperative Learning in higher education over the last fifteen years, including eight new chapters were written specifically for this edition. It presents a look at the history of small group instruction research, theory and practice and offers a glimpse at the future of this powerful instructional strategy.