Nowadays, students have to work intensively in teams with their peers. Criticism of group work has increased during the last years. This article describes seven misunderstandings about implementing cooperative learning in higher education.

1. ‘Group work is only invented to reduce grading time for instructors’. This argument could never be an incentive for introducing group work, as cooperative learning has many advantages (e.g. promoting deep learning, leading to higher student achievement, improving self-management etc.).

2. ‘Putting students into a group turns them automatically into a team’. Learning how to work in team does not happen on its own. Students need to be taught how to communicate with each other, how group dynamics work, how to build a consensus, and how to make progress in a discussion as requested by future employers.

3. ‘Teamwork certainly has a positive effect on student satisfaction’. Nevertheless, some students dislike working in groups. Hence, cooperative learning as such will not increase their satisfaction with the course. The instructors should do their best to explain why to engage in cooperative learning and monitor the group process intensively during the semester.

4. ‘Free riding, social loafing, or a reduction in effort are simply inevitable’. Contrary, our research shows that providing students a choice in learning method between individual learning and cooperative learning mitigates free riding and social loafing, resulting in highly motivated students to engage with the material.

5. ‘Peer assessment solves all problems’. However, a peer assessment does not guarantee that each student will be rewarded fairly for his or her contribution. We found that cooperative learning works effectively, in an environment without marking and without peer assessment.

6. ‘Guiding teamwork is a piece of cake’. This is not the case, as instructors must spend a significant amount of time acting as a facilitator to ensure effective group functioning, particularly in the early stages of the assessment process.

7. ‘Teamwork reduces the individual student’s workload’. Not at all!  Students spent much more time on group work than if they had to do the same task individually. As an instructor, we need to bear in mind that the workload is aligned with real cooperation and is consequently much greater than that involved in simply splitting up the tasks among team members.

Positive and enjoyable experiences of cooperating learning in accounting education do exist, but courage is needed to return to the basic elements of cooperative learning: positive interdependence, individual accountability, development of social skills, promotive face-to-face interaction and group processing.

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