Peer Teaching & Learning
{"Image DocumentName": "Peer Teaching & Learning", "Image ImageDescription": "Purpose. To involve students more actively in their own learning. To teach students to learn from each other as well as from the teacher. To encourage cooperation and collaboration in learning rather than competition. Description. These learning goals depend upon maximizing student interaction, so the starting point should be breaking the class up into pairs or small groups. You will probably want to balance the groups so that they will be able to work well together and collectively have the necessary skills to accomplish their projects. This may require some teacher intervention to break up cliques and other pre-formed social groupings. Each group may be assigned a topic, or they may be allowed to develop their own projects. Within groups, all the students may work together without specialization, or work can be divided so that each member has specific tasks. Ongoing progress reports may be used to help students stay on schedule and to ensure that work is divided fairly. Examples. In a survey course on world cultures, students were divided into groups of five. Each group was assigned a particular civilization and told to analyze it according to five variables: political institutions, economic factors, religious institutions, social structures, and artistic traditions. Within each group, work was divided so that each person specialized in one of the five areas. All the students worked together to create the final report. In a class on the novel, the class was divided into eight groups, in which they would remain all semester. Each group was assigned responsibility for a particular aspect of novels. One group was to become experts on plots, one on characterization, one on scene and setting, one on the use of rhetorical figures, and so on. There was no specialization within groups. Each group was assigned to meet once per week to discuss the aspects of that week s reading which fell into its area of expertise. Each week in class, one member of each group had to speak for their group s discussion. The speaking duties rotated within each group.", "Image XResolution": "37", "Image YResolution": "37", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Centimeter", "Image Software": "SlidePlayer", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered"}