Peer Assisted Learning News Today

Tips for combining classroom activities and peer-to-peer dialogue to develop students’ understanding of the language of assessment and feedback

In response to the paucity of clinical placements available in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, alternate options for prelicensure students were necessary in order for them to complete the fieldwork required for graduation. In response, Curtin University replaced a faculty-led fully-simulated placement with a peer-assisted learning model. This incorporated final-year students acting as peer teachers to penultimate-year students, thus creating new learning and teaching placements for the final-...

In this paper, we analyse the introduction of peer mentors into timetabled classes to understand how in-class mentoring supports students’ learning. The peer mentors in this study are high-achieving students who previously completed the same course and who were hired and trained to facilitate Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS). PASS gives students the opportunity to deepen their understanding through revision and active learning and are typically held outside of class time. In contrast, our t...

Access Foundation Programmes are a widening-participation initiative designed to encourage engagement in higher education among underrepresented groups, including those with socioeconomic and educational disadvantage. In particular, mature students enrolled in these programmes experience greater difficulties making the transition to tertiary education, especially when they opt to study disciplines traditionally considered difficult. Computer programming is perceived as a traditionally difficult ...

What happens when a peer-assisted learning scheme becomes “business as usual” rather than innovation? The proctoring scheme in undergraduate philosophy programmes at the University of Leeds has been running for over 25 years, making it one of the oldest (and possibly the single oldest) continuously running higher education peer-assisted learning schemes in the country. Over time, the centrality of the scheme in the teaching environment has changed, particularly in the shared understanding of...

ART BY ALEX AZAR Ryan Durie, a 20-year-old junior marine biology major at Stony Brook University, died by suicide in his suite on the Southampton campus on Feb. 24.  Upon one of his suitemates discovering Durie in his room in the afternoon, the Suffolk County Police were notified and dispatched to the campus. An open-casket funeral service was held in Holbrook, Long Island, on Feb. 28. Durie’s family and friends gathered to share sentiments and fond memories of how they remembered him. Durie...