Peer to Peer - be it students or staff it works
The last session I went to on Tuesday was a fascinating one, all three talks were about peer-to-peer support, but each approached the issue in very different ways.
The first was by Carol Wakeford of Manchester. Carol had been involved in supporting 30 students doing non-lab-based projects in their final year degree. As part of a CETL funded project the students were tasked with creating e-learning resources for their own curriculum. While each student had a one-to-one academic supervisor the programme was blended so that support was also offered by peers. This support was both in giving feedback to other participants on their project and responding to feedback received from others. Carol explained that the team used the Garrison, Anderson and Archer model of social, cognitive and teaching presence and focused on the first two areas.
Using NVivo the online discourse was analysed based on emergent themes (criteria). The analysis also looked at gender, programme of study and a few other factors.
The data showed that contribution per individual ranged from 0 to 65, and while the person who posted 65 times was male overall females contributed significantly more often then men. In terms of feedback there was twice as much feedback provided than there was response to feed back, an interesting distinction. The dyads and triads which formed among the students do seem to have been very useful for social engagement in the learning process, students said they felt they benefited from the process. However their was no improvement in project scores over previous years.
From my view the improvement in scores is less critical - as final year students those might have been driven by other factors, like the learning experience to date. The student impression that they were learning more would be enough to see me on this idea. Something to take to Glamorgan's Life Scientists!
The second presentation was given by Simon Walker from Greenwich. I'd had the pleasure of meeting Simon before at an event in Greenwich, so it was nice to see him again and find out what he has been up to.
Simon's focus was on a CAMELS project which was run at Greenwich, I was already familiar with the JISC Camel project Greenwich had hosted, Simon explained that this CAMELS project was focused on internal developments (intra-institutional) unlike the other CAMEL which had a inter-institutional remit. It was therefore housed on Greenwich's Moodle (if you clicked the CAMELS project link above you will need to sign in as a Guest to see the page).
The project involved a number of the academic schools and one of the Greenwich partner colleges - Bromley College as part of the Camels their were 'visits' to each of the parties in which a 'warts and all' presentation of what was going on in e-learning was shared. This approach, which is dependant on trust between the delivering school and those who visit allow for real two way learning, something which can break the silo pattern which can so easily occur in academic institutions.
Simon outlined some of the fruitful outcomes, highlighting in particular the engagement with Second Life which Bromley undertakes, leading it to inform the University of ways of using SL in learning and teaching - For more on this usage see the Bromley College SL blog.
In the spirit of CAMEL Simon highlighted the things that did not work in this process:
The third session was by Peter Sloep (well I can spell it better than I pronounce it Peter) of the Open University of the Netherlands Peter's presentation was looking at peer-to peer wiki-based student support. Some of the initial work on the project had been presented in an ALT-J paper in Oct 2005 called
Peter was looking at ways that the project had developed since then. The system works in a number of stages:
Peter reviewed the key features of the peer-student-tutors they were:
The presentation was followed by a rich discussion with lots of interest about what had happened and how. In this example the system not only works to improve the process, but also the outcome - what more can you ask?
The first was by Carol Wakeford of Manchester. Carol had been involved in supporting 30 students doing non-lab-based projects in their final year degree. As part of a CETL funded project the students were tasked with creating e-learning resources for their own curriculum. While each student had a one-to-one academic supervisor the programme was blended so that support was also offered by peers. This support was both in giving feedback to other participants on their project and responding to feedback received from others. Carol explained that the team used the Garrison, Anderson and Archer model of social, cognitive and teaching presence and focused on the first two areas.
Using NVivo the online discourse was analysed based on emergent themes (criteria). The analysis also looked at gender, programme of study and a few other factors.
The data showed that contribution per individual ranged from 0 to 65, and while the person who posted 65 times was male overall females contributed significantly more often then men. In terms of feedback there was twice as much feedback provided than there was response to feed back, an interesting distinction. The dyads and triads which formed among the students do seem to have been very useful for social engagement in the learning process, students said they felt they benefited from the process. However their was no improvement in project scores over previous years.
From my view the improvement in scores is less critical - as final year students those might have been driven by other factors, like the learning experience to date. The student impression that they were learning more would be enough to see me on this idea. Something to take to Glamorgan's Life Scientists!
The second presentation was given by Simon Walker from Greenwich. I'd had the pleasure of meeting Simon before at an event in Greenwich, so it was nice to see him again and find out what he has been up to.
Simon's focus was on a CAMELS project which was run at Greenwich, I was already familiar with the JISC Camel project Greenwich had hosted, Simon explained that this CAMELS project was focused on internal developments (intra-institutional) unlike the other CAMEL which had a inter-institutional remit. It was therefore housed on Greenwich's Moodle (if you clicked the CAMELS project link above you will need to sign in as a Guest to see the page).
The project involved a number of the academic schools and one of the Greenwich partner colleges - Bromley College as part of the Camels their were 'visits' to each of the parties in which a 'warts and all' presentation of what was going on in e-learning was shared. This approach, which is dependant on trust between the delivering school and those who visit allow for real two way learning, something which can break the silo pattern which can so easily occur in academic institutions.
Simon outlined some of the fruitful outcomes, highlighting in particular the engagement with Second Life which Bromley undertakes, leading it to inform the University of ways of using SL in learning and teaching - For more on this usage see the Bromley College SL blog.
In the spirit of CAMEL Simon highlighted the things that did not work in this process:
- Not all partners gave their full commitment
- Trust needs to develop it doesn't just happen
- A community of shared interested was created but not really a community of practice
- Lack of critique, the absence of trust meant people were not able to be as creatively critical as they might have been
The third session was by Peter Sloep (well I can spell it better than I pronounce it Peter) of the Open University of the Netherlands Peter's presentation was looking at peer-to peer wiki-based student support. Some of the initial work on the project had been presented in an ALT-J paper in Oct 2005 called
"Identification of critical time-consuming student support activities in e-learning"
Peter was looking at ways that the project had developed since then. The system works in a number of stages:
- Students post a question centrally
- A latent semantic analysis identifies (a) appropriate text (The OU being a text heavy delivery this would be easier for them than for other lecture-tutorial based institutions (b) most suitable peers from the former student group
- The system sets up a wiki with the question and text fragments identified by the latent semantic analysis
- System links question to three peer-tutors
- Answer is developed on the wiki by peer-tutors as a collaborative process.
Peter reviewed the key features of the peer-student-tutors they were:
- Content competent - they have completed the unit
- Availability - Based on actual availability and past and present workload
- Eligibility - The best results seem to come from the peer-students closer in study level to the student - linked to the joint zone of proximal development.
The presentation was followed by a rich discussion with lots of interest about what had happened and how. In this example the system not only works to improve the process, but also the outcome - what more can you ask?
Labels: ALT-C2007, Camels, collaberation, peer, wikis
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