Abstract: From their concern about what teachers do to what students do, the increasing number of educators realize that the ultimate goal of the college education is to cultivate learners with autonomous learning abilities. In autonomous learning, students, as the center in learning, try to achieve learning goals through independent analysis, exploration, practice, questioning and creation. But autonomous learning does not mean learning alone. Students cooperation in autonomous learning plays an essential role in the cultivation of their learning ability, which can not be ignored. When learning cooperatively in the comparatively relaxing learning context, learners feel safe and relaxed, have a sense of belonging, and access to more opportunities to demonstrate themselves, which contributes to the building of their selfconfidence and meeting their needs of selffulfilling. As teaching practitioners in university, from the perspective of an action research, the authors try to explore the effective practices and the promoting effects that collaborative learning has on the cultivation of students’learning ability, adopting the qualitative research method by way of questionnaire and a followup interview.