Peer assisted academic support: a comparison of mentors’ and mentees’ experiences of a drop-in programme

Centralisation: placing Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) within the wider work of learning developers

“…(2017) find that while supplemental instruction may reduce time demands on faculty, the task of recruiting and training mentors to ensure high quality schemes often led to more, rather than less, demand on AL time. This not only adds to the demands of PASS but might also lead to instances where mentors are not adequately trained in the skills necessary for the facilitation and running of a PASS (Herrmann-Werner et al, 2017;Garcia-Melgar et al, 2021). Mentors who are not adequately trained also run the risk of not knowing when to assert boundaries between facilitation and teaching.…”

“…Mentors who are not adequately trained also run the risk of not knowing when to assert boundaries between facilitation and teaching. In some cases, this has led to programmes which are perceived as exam support or proof-reading services (Garcia-Melgar et al, 2021). Difficulty in securing funding to support the development of PASS has also been reported as a challenge to developing and maintaining PASS (Green, 2011).…”

“…However, sessions might also include pastoral discussions (Green, 2011), or include one-to-one sessions (McIntosh, 2019). PASS sessions are most often offered to first-and second-year students and facilitated by pairs of second-or third-year students, referred to as 'PASS mentors' (Garcia-Melgar et al, 2021) or 'leaders' in some Fostier and Carey (2007) indicate that offering PASS on a biomedical cohort produced a marked positive effect on both exam scores and student retention. Similarly, Green (2018) reported that within a nursing cohort, 90% of students who engaged with PASS displayed an increase in subject knowledge.…”

“…PASS attendance as a predictor of higher academic attainment was substantiated by Spedding, Hawkes and Burgess (2017) who found a positive relationship between PASS attendance and academic performance among 340 first-year psychology students. This positive correlation is perhaps a result of the active learning which we know PASS permits; according to Capstick (2004) and Garcia-Melgar et al (2021) peer discussion of course material moves learning from a grade-focused, and perhaps a more surface learning position, to a position which focuses on deeper learning through the creation of meaning from the course content.…”

“…By being peer led, PASS sessions allow students to learn in an informal and supplementary environment; this encourages deeper knowledge and a greater sense of belonging and ownership among student cohorts (Hoffman et al, 2002;Tibingana-Ahimbisibwe et al, 2020;Garcia-Melgar et al, 2021) as well as increased communication and cohesion between students in the higher year(s) (Green, 2001;Dawson, et al, 2014). PASS is particularly beneficial to students from economically or socially disadvantaged communities as well as undergraduate and postgraduate international students, aiding both learning and integration (Rapley, 2011;Zaccagnini and Verenikina, 2013;Duah, Croft and Inglis, 2014;Chilvers, 2016).…”