The impact of peer-peer learning and student-lecturer interaction on Biology pre-service teachers’ achievements

Abstract

Because of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an emergency shift to online learning in tertiary institutions worldwide. Here, I aimed to determine the impact of guided peer-peer interaction on students' achievement. A Biology Achievement Test was used to collect data. I used a quasi-experimental design and analysed the data using the independent sample t-test and one-way ANOVA. A comparison of the experimental group mean marks before and after the lockdown did not reveal significant differences. However, the control group’s mean mark was significantly higher before than during the lockdown period. Before the lockdown, the performance of the experimental group did not show any significant difference with that of the control group. There was a significant difference in performance between the two groups during the lockdown. Lecturer guided interaction had a significant impact while the digital divide did not have a significant impact on students’ performance.
 
 Keywords: online learning; tertiary institutions; peer-peer interaction; digital divide

A Comparison of Selected Assessment Results before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic in One University in South Africa

“…The onset of the pandemic could have resulted in limited interaction due to challenges such as network. According to the social cognitive theory, learning is more effective when learners are actively involved in the process of knowledge construction through peer-peer interaction or student-lecture interaction as well as interaction with the environment (Kay & Kibble, 2016;Mafugu, 2021). Li and Konsantoppoulos, (2017) observed no significant effect of class size on student performance.…”