Empowering participation of students from religious schools among heterogeneous group in ESL collaborative learning

Collaborative learning is deemed to be a widely used method in teaching and learning especially in tertiary education. It includes various group activities involving students to actively engage in classroom activities. This study investigates the attitude of students from religious school in higher learning institution towards collaborative learning in ESL classrooms. Based on teachers’ experience in ESL classrooms, students from religious schools hesitated to actively engage in mixed-gender group activities. The research methodology uses a quantitative approach by distributing a set of questionnaire to students from religious schools in two higher learning institutions in Kelantan, Universiti Malaya Kampus Nilam Puri and Kolej Islam Antarabangsa Sultan Ismail Petra. This questionnaire consists of two parts; Part A and Part B in which there are 6 questions in Part A; mainly asking on the participant’s information on their demographic information and the details about their study programme, while another 12 questions are asked in Part B specifically the students’ perceptions towards Collaborative Learning in Heterogeneous Group according to gender.