Utilizing Cooperative Learning in Islamic College Students’ Classroom

ABSTRACT The research aims at utilizing cooperative learning in teaching reading skill for Islamic college students. The research was classroom action research which was conducted in two cycles where each cycle consisted of planning, implementation, observation and reflection. The subject were taken from PAI 5 which contained 30 students. The data of this research were obtained from the test, observation checklist, and field notes. The findings of research showed that cooperative learning was effective in developing students’ reading skill. The findings revealed that there were nineteen students who achieved the minimum criteria of achievement in cycle 1, which percentage was 63.3%. In cycle 2, it was found that there were twenty five students who achieved the minimum criteria of achievement, which percentage increased to 83.3%. Both of the classical and individual achievements have met the criteria of success. Besides, students were active in joining classroom activities and completing their classroom tasks. Therefore, it can be concluded that the cooperative learning was effective to develop the students’ reading skill. ABSTRAK Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memanfaatkan pembelajaran kooperatif dalam pembelajaran keterampilan membaca mahasiswa di perguruan tinggi Islam. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian tindakan kelas yang dilakukan dalam dua siklus dimana setiap siklus terdiri dari perencanaan, pelaksanaan, observasi dan refleksi. Subjek penelitian diambil dari kelas PAI 5 yang terdiri dari 30 mahasiswa. Data penelitian ini diperoleh dari hasil tes , lembar observasi, dan catatan lapangan. Temuan penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pembelajaran kooperatif efektif dalam mengembangkan keterampilan membaca maha siswa. Temuan menunjukkan bahwa ada sembilan belas mahasiswa yang mencapai kriteria pencapaian minimal pada siklus 1 , dengan persentase 63,3%. Pada siklus 2, ditemukan bahwa ada dua puluh lima mahasiswa yang mencapai kriteria pencapaian minimum dengan persentase 83,3%. Persentase klasik dan individual telah memenuhi kriteria keberhasilan. Selain itu, mahasiswa aktif mengikuti kegiatan kelas dan menyelesaikan tugas kelas mereka. Oleh karena itu, dapat disimpulkan bahwa pembelajaran kooperatif efektif untuk mengembangkan keterampilan membaca mahasiswa . How to Cite : Marzuki, A., G. (2016). Utilizing Cooperative Learning in Islamic College Students’ Classroom. IJEE (Indonesian Journal of English Education), 3 (2), 123-139 doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5528. Permalink/ DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5528


INTRODUCTION
English is taught as a compulsory foreign language in Indonesia. It is implemented at elementary school up to university level. Basically teaching English is focused on four language skills, namely, speaking, listening, writing, and reading.
Reading skill is important for the students to learn in order to get much information or improve their knowledge through many kinds of texts. For college students, they have to learn many kinds of books that are written in English ttherefore, reading as a skill needs a careful attention. Students are expected not only to read the text but also to understand or to comprehend what they read. They are expected to improve their knowledge after reading books or texts.
Reading skill is also one of the best ways to master English. Reading material serves readers with several advantages, namely: providing rich sources of vocabulary and grammar. Besides, it is a practice media for readers to train their English pronunciation.
However, reading English text for some students are not easy.
Sometimes they do not understand the content of the texts or they cannot catch the information from the texts. This happens because of several problems that must be overcome by English lecturers. The students are expected to be able to read English text with good comprehension.
Although some of Indonesian students have learnt English since they are in Elementary School, it cannot be denied that most of them are still hardly able to speak or to communicate in English. The same case is also found in the teaching of reading, which is frequently integrated with vocabulary. It is still far from the learning target. Available data showed that most students are not able to answer comprehension questions based on the reading text they have read (Haerudin, 2009). Clemen (2000) states that reading is felt as one of the central difficulties of students with learning disability.
The main objective of teaching reading is to enable the students to get meaning from the written language (Pan & Wu, 2013). For college students, they are expected to have standard ability to comprehend and to find information from reading text as stated in curriculum, where the students must be able to get information and understand the messages from the written text or oral text in any situation. Students have to analyze and use information from some materials.
Based on the researcher's teaching experience at Islamic education department, most students were not able to answer comprehension questions which are usually based on the scanning and skimming strategies or to read the text quickly. For example, when they were asked some questions related to the text, they could not even finish answering the questions given. The students spent much time to read reading text word by word or sentence by sentence just to answer questions. They also waste their time to open dictionary to find out meaning of difficult words. Moreover, English lecturer frequently applied the teaching and learning activities which emphasized on individual work. It means that learners have to compete with their mates.
Utilizing cooperative learning in teaching reading was challenging. The reason was that when the researcher conducts teaching reading, the result was not satisfied and the students face some problems in doing the questions on reading; such as difficulty to determine the idea of a paragraph or topic of the text, to find out the information stated implicitly and explicitly, detail information and locating reference, it is also found out that students lack vocabulary. Cooperative learning on the other hand, is the concept for working together to accomplish and share goals or the students can share the idea, the task or assignments with their peer in the group. In cooperative learning a situation where there is a positive interdependency among students' goal attainments; students perceive that they can reach their learning goals if and only if other students in the learning group also reach their goals (Johnson and Johnson, 1989). There have been many researchers who claim that cooperative learning result higher intellectual achievement than competitive learning. In other words, learners can help one another in accomplishing their tasks or duties to develop their reading skill and create social relationship among them through cooperative learning.
This research was focused on teaching students to find the main idea of text, the information stated implicitly and explicitly, detail information and locating reference through cooperative learning. This learning strategy helped the students to comprehend English text because in cooperative learning, the researcher provided chance to the students to share their opinion or idea in doing some assignment especially in English reading text. The objective of this research was to find out how the lecturer implements cooperative learning in teaching reading successfully.
In addition, the result of this research can be a meaningful contribution for both lecturers of English and students. For students, it can be a way to learn and to develop their English skill generally and their English reading skill specifically; for lecturers, it can be an additional input in applying various techniques in teaching English, particularly in reading skill.

METHOD
The design of the research was Classroom Action Research. This classroom action research is designed to develop students' reading skill through cooperative learning. The techniques were developed into more applicable model through spiral of cycle; each of which covers planning, acting, observing, and reflecting.
According to Kemmis and McTaggart (1988), Classroom Action Research suggests that action research is collaborative; it involves those responsible in improving it, widening the collaborating group from those most directly improved to as many as possible of those affected by the practice concerned. This research required the researcher and the collaborative lecturer to design lesson plans; prepare instructional material and media, and implement the action plan.

Time and Setting of the Research
This research was conducted at the second semester Islamic Education Department students of FTIK IAIN Palu. Its subject was students at the second semester consisting of 8 parallel classes. The classes consists of 18 up to 30 students. The subject were taken from PAI 5 which contained 30 students.

Steps of the Research
Here is the scheme of action research: Figure 1. Classroom Action Research Scheme (Adapted from Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988) To conduct the research, the researcher and his collaborator began The steps proposed can be illustrated as follows:

Plan
The researcher constructed lesson plan, provided reading materials, put students into cooperative learning, prepared quizzes for assessment, and provided observational sheets, field notes, and criteria of success.

Action
The researcher presented materials, instructed students to work in pairs and in groups, and evaluated them informally.

Observation
The observation checklist was used by the researcher to observe the students activities and take some notes or records on the process of teaching and learning. He documented action effects which provide basis for following up discussion and reflection.

Reflection
The researcher recalled all information which have been recorded in observation, questionnaire, tasks as the activities and field notes which provided basis for the revised plan in next cycle.

Revised Plan
The researcher still continued the general purpose but he reduced strategy that he considered unnecessary or action a little bit that did not maintain the plan.

Procedures of Data Collection
Data collection is a process of gathering information in a disciplined and systematic way about a researchable question (Bogdan and Biklen, 1998). This stresses on collecting information and data as evidences in answering the research question. The researcher carried out both library research and field research. In order to obtain accurate and reliable data, the researcher carried out a field research by employing some instruments, i.e. observation checklist, field notes, and test. Those instruments were used in the following procedures.

Observation Checklist
Observation checklist was used to identify and to obtain data on students' performance (they can learn cooperatively in small group or pairs to share their opinion, ideas, argumentation, understanding, and help each other) and lecturer's teaching one (teaching steps). The students' classroom performance covered students' response toward the teachinglearning process and problems they encountered when doing classroom task. Observation checklist was done to gain data of lecturer's teaching performance was aimed at evaluating lecturer in providing evaluation modeling to students. Therefore, there were two kinds of observation checklist in this research, namely students' classroom performance and lecturer's teaching performance.

Field note
Field note was used to obtain data from the field/classroom. It covered all information about the research to record actual events during the observation mainly to collect data on implementation of classroom teaching. Bogdan and Biklen (1998) argues that field notes are written account, what the researcher hears, sees, experiences, and thinks in the course of collecting data and reflecting on the data in qualitative research.

Test
The researcher measured student's achievement in reading. The two kinds of tasks which consisted of fifteen items were prepared by the researcher. Task I had two points for each number while task II had one poin for each number so the total point was 20. The test was administered at last meeting of each cycle in order to know effectiveness of the technique given.

Criteria of Success
In order to have required achievement in reading and to determine continuation of cycle, criteria of success need to be previously determined. Moreover, the main concept of action research suggests that an appropriate form of analysis will be through discussion of criteria as well as isolated instance of behavior (McNiff, 1992). Therefore, the researcher and the collaborator determined the criteria of success. Since the research was about teaching reading through cooperative learning, so the criteria of success in this research were as follows: (1) The students' score should achieve seventy five (based on the minimum completing criteria) and there should be at least 75% students who got individual achievement at least 75 (this is taken from achievement test). (2) The students can learn cooperatively in small group or pairs to share their opinion, ideas, argumentation, understanding, and help each other and meet at least 75% from the total of the students (this is taken from observation checklist).

Technique of Data analysis
In classroom action research, data analysis is done through reflection. The reflection phase is the place the researcher to collect the data from different instruments, selecting, categorizing, comparing, synthesizing, and interpreting data; and it will be done in ongoing cyclical process as proposed by McMillan and Schumacher, 1993).
To validate data, the researcher employed triangulation. Triangulation is cross scheme of cross validation data gained from the field. It consists of three main steps to analyze data; they are data collection, data reduction and data display. It was focused on the cross check between the data obtained from different instruments that were employed in research. It was aimed at making data more accurate. The obtained data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively.
Quantitative data were analyzed based on the students' achievement on each evaluation phase. Its result was then be correlated with qualitative data related to lecturer's performance and students' response in ongoing process.
The information that was derived from data analysis was compared with the criteria of success. Since there were three major indicators of success formulated in this research, each of item was analyzed based on fact in the field. First, the result of students' reading evaluation and second, the result of observation which related to lecturer's performance was analyzed based on criteria of teaching procedures designed for teaching reading. The criteria of categorizing lecturers' performance were in form of "Yes" if the procedure was implemented, and "No" if the procedure was not implemented. The categorized of lecturer's performance was determined the "Successful" if indicator was "Yes" and "Failed" if indicator was "No." Third, the result of students' classroom participation was analyzed through category that consists of "Low, Mid, and High" adapted from Bailey (2005). Therefore, the qualitative data were taken from lecturer performance, and instructional document preparation, students' classroom participation, and field notes. The quantitative data were gained from students' result evaluation; it was analyzed through the following formula as proposed by Sugiono (2007) To know the students' success in reading, the researcher used the following formula as proposed by Harahap (1992):

Cycle 1
Cycle 1 consisted of three meetings. In the planning phase, the lesson plan was prepared based on the syllabus and the previously identified problems. The instructional objectives were used as the basic of the selection of the possible instructional material which related on the Islamic topic. The students were arranged in small groups. Each group was assigned to discuss their problems in understanding the content of the text during their English study period. The researcher prepared a reading text which related to Islamic topic then distributed to each group, there was one text for each student to be discussed.
It was decided that the scoring system was based on the individual score gained by the students in answering the questions based on the reading text correctly.
In the implementation phase, the three phase technique, pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading was implemented. During the pre-reading, the purpose of the study and the instructional objectives were introduced. The students were divided in small groups so there were six groups. Then each group was requested to read and discuss their reading text. In this phase, the students used dictionary to find the meaning of important and unknown words such as the title and the first line of the text. In the while-reading phase, the students were demanded to employ skimming-scanning, guessing the meaning of a word from the context, considering other sentences to figure out the meaning of a sentence, and repetition strategy. Skimming involves searching for the main ideas the speaker wants to get across, while scanning means searching for specific details of interest to the learner, and repetition is the strategy of reading a passage more than once to understand it more completely. Then the students were asked to answer the questions based on the text. Next the students' groups were requested to present their answer from the questions based on the text in front of the class. After groups' presentation, the others groups were given opportunity to comment, argue, or even ask questions to the presenter. This interaction was observed by the researcher, individual active participation was check-listed in the column that has been previously prepared and notes were jotted down based on the classroom situation during the four meetings implementation phase. In the post-reading phase, the students were asked to employ summarizing strategy. Summarizing is making a written summary of new information gained through reading. It enables the students to grasp the original text better. The achievement of the set criteria in cycle 1 is graphed in figure 2. The figure indicates that there are still quite a few students who have not passed the set criteria. The results are also presented in the percentage table as can be described in Table 2. The data indicate that there are still 11 or 36.6% of the subjects who have not passed the set criteria. Since the criteria of success were planned based on the individual gained score and active participation, the results of the observation on the students' active participation are graphed in figure 3. The figure indicates that there are many students who are not active during the discussion and meetings in cycle 1. The number and the percentage of the students who are not active are presented in table 3.  In the reflection phase, it is concluded that the criteria of success has not been achieved and that the revised plan must be prepared. Consequently the research has to continue to cycle 2. The results of the reflection indicate that there must be improvement in the process of the teaching and learning procedures.

Cycle 2
Cycle 2 consisted of three meetings. The pairs in cycle 2 were the same students as the pairs in cycle 1. In the planning phase, the revised plan, the way of topic given for each group was revised. Each group freely chose and decided one topic of reading text based on their interest. The reading texts were provided by the researcher from many sources. There were five reading texts provided by the researcher in this cycle. Before starting the teaching and learning process, every member of the group was assigned to read the chosen topic individually and then read and discuss the reading text in group. The implementation phase in cycle 2 was the same as the one in cycle 1; prewhile-post reading. However, the employment of cooperative learning in pre and while-reading were revised. In the pre-reading phase, the students were guided to use the title to predict the content of the text and paying attention to words or phrases that show how text is organized. In while-reading phase, the students were demanded to guess the meaning of a word from the context and skipping the unknown words and. associate to the students' background knowledge, while notetaking is writing down key words and concepts in abbreviated verbal, graphic, or numerical form while reading. It makes students active participants in their learning, helps them organize important concepts, remember information, and becomes one of their study aids. In post-reading phase, the students were guided and demanded to summarize the main ideas of the paragraphs. The results of cycle 2 are graphed in figure 4. The data in figure 4 indicate that only few students who get lower than  The data in table 3 indicate that 25 out of 30 or 83.3% have achieved the criteria of success and only 5 out of 30 or 16.6% who have not passed the set criteria. The active participation of the students in cycle two was also observed. The data of the active participation are graphed in figure 5. The data in figure 5 indicate that not all of the students are active. There are still 4 students are not active. It can be seen also in Table 4 that 26 or 86.6% of the students are active and 4 or 13.3% of the students are not active. The data in table 5 indicate that not all of the students participate actively during the classroom meetings in cycle 2 however; the students' active participation has reached 86.6% or more than ≥75. Since the criteria of success have been achieved, cycle was stopped.
In the reflection of cycle 2, it is noted that the students' achievement increase from cycle 1 to cycle 2. The improvement is graphed in figure 6. The data in figure 6 indicate that the students who passed the criteria increase significantly from cycle 1 to cycle 2. The same case applies to the improvement in the student's active participation during the class meeting. The improvement in the student's active participation between cycle 1 and cycle 2 is graphed in figure 7. The data in figure 7 indicate that most of the students who are not active in cycle 1 become active in the classroom meeting cycle 2. The improvement of the students' reading comprehension and the active participation during the classroom meeting is believed to be affected by the implementation of the revised plan.

Student's participation in learning and teaching process
Assessment on teaching learning process should be holistically conducted by the researcher in order to enable the lecturer to administer an accurate judgment about the process. As Clemen (2000) states, Holistic assessment includes the assessment concerns about students' participation in classroom interaction. Then, Qoriah (2009) adds that students' participation need to be assessed to make sure that they are feel be appreciated every time they do their best. In conjunction to assessment on students' participation, students' participation in the teaching learning process can be assessed by using provided charts. It is clear that to assess or to evaluate students' participation contributes to reduce their anxiety to lesson or any quite complicated classroom task. There was a slight difference between Burden's and Byrd's way in observing students participation and the researcher's way. To assess students' classroom participation, the researcher employed observation checklist.

Student's Performance
Students' performance in the teaching and learning process was represented by their active participation during the teaching and learning process (Qoriah, 2009). It was by purpose prepared by the researcher in order to see the difference in students' performance from meeting to meeting. It is clear that to assess or to evaluate students' performance contributes to reducing their anxiety to lesson or any quite complicated classroom task.

Students' improvement
The students' improvement in reading through cooperative learning were investigated and analyzed through evaluation phase of the teaching learning process (Haerudin, 2009). The researcher focused on the two criteria of success in which he needed to analyze at the end of cycle. In order to provide better understanding toward the findings, the result of analysis is going to be elaborated as follows:

Meetings 1, 2, 3 in cycle I
To analyze the three criteria of success, the researcher utilized cooperative learning, observation check-list, and field notes. The result of analysis was that from the first test of the cycle 1 it was found there were nineteen of thirty students who got "good" or "very good" score. It meant that the students' successful percentage that got success level from the first test of cycle I had not yet meet the criteria of success. Because, the percentage approach employed formula 19 x 100% : 30 = 63.3%. 19 was the number of students who got success qualification; 30 was the number of all students, and 100 is the deviation scale. On the other hand, the percentage of classroom success should be 75% of the number of students.
The students' participation in learning process was identified through classroom activities. Participation as a form of learning process was analyzed qualitatively. The result of observation shows that the students were actively participating in classroom activities.

Meetings 1, 2, 3, in cycle 2
The result of analysis toward evaluation on cycle II meeting 3 evoked the significant development on students' reading. Through the second test in cycle II; it was found that there were twenty five students who got "success" qualification. It means that the number of students who got "success" from the second evaluation of cycle II has met the criteria of success; because the percentage approach employs formula 25 x 100%: 30 = 83.3%. 25 is the number of students who get "success" qualification; 30 is the number of all students, and 100 is the deviation scale. Since the number of students who got "success" qualification more than 75% of the total number of students (83.3%), so it is concluded that the criteria of classroom achievement has been achieved.
Meanwhile the higher score of twenty four students more than 75. It can be interpreted that it is absolutely reasonable for the researcher to judge that the criteria of success have been achieved since the criteria of success for individual students should be 75; moreover there were twenty four students who got at least 75 so the number has represented all class participants. It was supported by previous finding (Haerudin, 2009) that cooperative learning was effective in improving students' reading comprehension. The effectiveness of group work in cooperative learning was shown by the improvement of students' mean score, where in cycle 1 the mean score was 8.02 and in cycle 2 became 8.62. There were 35 students (87.18%) got greater than 70 in cycle I, whereas in Cycle II, all of the 42 students (100 %) got greater than 70.
Furthermore, Jalilifar (2009) found that cooperative learning (STAD type) was effective in improving EFL reading comprehension achievement. Then, Pan and Wu (2013) who conducted a research by comparing the cooperative learning instruction and traditional lecture instruction. This experiment was implemented in a Freshman English Reading course, a two credit course, with two hours of instruction per week, over a full semester. Seventy-eight EFL freshmen taking Freshman English Reading courses participated in this study, with 44 participants in the experimental group and 34 in the comparison group. We employed a pretest-posttest comparison group quasi-experimental design. The experimental group received a reciprocal cooperative learning instruction, whereas the comparison group received a traditional lecture instruction. Both groups were administered three English-reading achievement tests and an English learning motivation scale. The data were analyzed by means, standard deviations, t tests, and oneway ANCOVA. The findings indicate statistically significant differences in favor of cooperative learning instruction on English reading comprehension, particularly among medium-and low-proficiency students. Cooperative learning instruction also created a significantly positive effect on student motivation toward learning English reading. In conclusion, they strongly suggest teachers use cooperative learning instruction in university-level EFL reading classes.
In addition, Bolukbas et. al (2011) found that cooperative learning was an effective way to promote student participation and enthusiasm as well as a useful technique for language learners to accomplish reading tasks in the EFL classroom.
As a result, the significant achievement of this research in cycle II was caused of the application of cooperative learning technique and the implementation of some findings in reflection in cycle I, namely: (1) The lecturer needs to set the time proportionally for each of the activities done. In this matter, the lecturer set the three main activities proportionally based on the content of the activities (pre-activities 5%, while-activities 80%, and post-activities 15%). The preactivities just covered 5% since in this phase the lecturer just did some short activities like asking questions to lead the students to the topic discussed. While-activities covered the biggest amount of time since this phase is the core activities and the time to apply the cooperative learning technique. And the last, post-activities covered 15% of all the time. In this phase, the lecturer did three activities, namely: concluded the material and provided the students with reinforcement, flashed back to the previous classroom activity, administered the students with homework and suggested them to memorize all the words that have been given.
(2) When asking the students for turn, the lecturer should not only give a chance to certain students but also others students proportionally. The common mistake of a lecturer in the classroom activities is that, he usually does not give a chance proportionally to the students. He just gives chance for a certain student that he/she desired. This treatment becomes very crucial since it can encourage the students motivation, interest, and attention.
(3) In explaining the task or giving instruction using English, the lecturer needed to explain it in Indonesian to prevent to students misunderstanding. This treatment is also very important since not all the students understand what the lecturer have explained and instructed. So, after explaining and instructing them, he should confirm whether they have already understood or not. Then, he translated into Indonesian the explanation and instruction as clear as possible to avoid the students' misunderstanding.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION Conclusion
The students' skill in reading the text had developed successfully through the implementation of cooperative learning strategy. This happened since the students had learning experiences with their teammates in sharing their ideas, comments, mutual support, and help one another in doing their tasks. Implementing cooperative learning strategy could be developed the students' reading skill. The students were able to answer the questions on their reading a text. This happened since the teaching and learning activities focused on solving the students' problem in finding the main idea, specific information, and location of referent. The classroom environment also made the students had active involvement by sharing ideas in group or team practice. Comparing the result of students' achievement in the first cycle, the students' achievement on second cycle has significant development. This can be studied from the students' successful percentage of reading test in cycle 1 was 63.3% be increased to 83.3% in cycle 2. Besides, this method can be applied to encourage students to be active in joining classroom activities and completing their classroom tasks.

Suggestion
Firstly the students' motivation should be triggered by changing of learning atmosphere where the low achievement of students could be encouraged to be involved in the teaching and learning activities by working with the high achievement students them they could share their ideas to other students.
Second, lecturers should implement cooperative learning as an alternative solution to organize the teaching and learning process. It was because such learning would facilitate the students to interact each others.
Beside that the cooperative learning should be applied to develop students' social skills that has been neglected in the model of competitive way in arranging students' interaction in the classroom. It was also suggested to the lecturers to give a reward toward the students who got the best mark such as at the end of semester.