There is an increasing body of evidence that students are a valuable resource for other students as they make transitions through their university life (e.g. Keenan, 2014; special edition of JLDHE see refs below).
Student peer support will of course also happen informally, but here we outline some more formalised ways of facilitating this kind of activity and the benefits that can be gained from carefully designed and run schemes. Peer support activities generally fall into two categories (with some overlap): Peer Mentoring and Peer-Assisted Learning.
Peer Mentoring involves linking more experienced students with less experienced students in order to provide guidance and support based upon sharing what they have learnt from their experiences at university. The information here is aimed at anyone in MMU who is interested in developing a student peer mentoring scheme for their students
Peer assisted learning schemes have been growing in all types of universities and are consistently shown to have benefits to student attenders, student leaders, academic staff and to the creation of learning communities.
At Manchester Met, we are beginning to work with peer-led learning schemes as detailed below.
This is a structured role, akin to leading a group study session. Peer Assisted Learning is implemented at course level and sessions are run once a week. Timetabled PAL sessions are included in level 4 student timetables in key courses where PALs is currently running. The academic staff member gives (say) the lecture on a Monday. Later in the week, say, Wednesday, the PAL session is timetabled. Two student leaders prepare a group study session to follow up on the lecture. The session is not compulsory, but all students are made aware, usually in the lecture, that this is available to all. During the session students will work with issues, problems or aspects that the students identify. If you are interested in having PALs sessions for your students contact the PAL Team on pal@mmu.ac.uk.
Training of the PALS is a full -day session (provided by the Peer Assisted Learning team) where students are trained in the practice of facilitation. Training specifically focusses on avoidance of a ‘teaching’ role: if direct questions are asked student leaders are trained to reflect these back to the group and to explore difficult concepts rather than to re-teach them. The PAL Leaders should work closely with the unit tutor, feeding back on the degree to which difficult concepts are being grasped, for example. This would normally occur in a debrief session where the PAL Leaders meet briefly with the unit tutor and the PAL team sometime after the PAL session.
Peer Assisted Learning information for students on the ManMet Student Life website.
In this video, three Nursing PAL Leaders discuss their experiences of supporting students through building learning communities.
For information on the centralised training programme offered to Departments recruiting Peer Mentors, please contact Helen Lord.
Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education Special Edition: Academic Peer Learning (Part II)
HEA report Mapping student-led peer learning in the UK