Exploring Peer Learning: Student to Student, Lecturer to Lecturer

Abstract

This article explores how lecturers in statistics have adopted a model for a student peer learning project initially established in a music school. The exploration shows how disciplinary differences generate different peer learning approaches between students and how a team of lecturers has adapted a project from one discipline and institution to another. In essence, it explores the nature of peer learning from the perspective of student peers, including the extra insight that is available from the view of lecturer peers. The model is important as it focuses on peer learning that resides in informal spaces rather than within a formalised curriculum.Keywords: peer learning, peer mentoring, organisational learning Peer Learning beyond the CurriculumInteracting with others -peer learning -has always been an important dimension for any learner and supports the learning opportunities provided in formal arenas such as lectures, tutorials, rehearsals and laboratory classes. Often, peer learning is associated with a variety of out-of-class activities such as group projects and assignments. Peer learning is most often studied within the curriculum, organised by lecturers and mediated by tutors (Boud et al., 2001). However, important aspects of peer learning occur outside the formal curriculum, and this has not been much investigated, particularly in the two disciplines considered here, music education and statistics education. As educators we don't really know much about what happens in peer-mediated learning beyond the curriculum (Havnes, 2008) in tertiary courses in statistics or music.Yet with a greater focus on e-learning and electronic communication, such aspects of peer learning become more important. Students are less and less likely to attend classes in person and benefit from the lecturer's live approach and the actual class interactions. Rather, they obtain learning materials electronically, experience the classes via recordings, and build their educational experiences in the virtual world. In such a context, peer interactions beyond the formal curriculum, maybe with students in other classes (or even other disciplines), and organised by the participants themselves, become an essential component of successful learning. For tertiary educators, insight into the intention and practices of such peer interactions -even if they are outside the formal curriculum -contributes to the development of a more effective curriculum.As lecturers, we know that such peer learning and sharing occur amongst our students, but we know little about what actually takes place. In situations where we set up and encourage peer learning programs, such as the PAL program in accounting investigated in Dobbie and Joyce (2009), we are able to obtain some knowledge about how the peer learning occurs by discussion with participants. We also have our own experiences of peer learning and sharing as we learn from each other as academics and collaborate on grant getting and article writing. The authors of this article, for instance, have sh...

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