Learning Assistant (LA) programs oversee and support undergraduate instructors and faculty members who work together to facilitate student learning in a variety of classroom settings. The success of an LA program is tied to experiences of the participants; therefore, understanding the perceptions of LAs and faculty is central to driving…

Formative assessment is highly beneficial for student motivation and achievement, but in undergraduate courses, especially large introductory life sciences courses, it may be difficult for instructors to gather the evidence necessary for quality formative assessment. Undergraduate teaching and learning assistants (UTLAs) can help to implement…

The Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) program at Sacramento State was established in 2012 with one section supporting introductory chemistry. The program now serves 17 courses with high rates of students who receive a D or an F or withdraw (DFW) from the course in biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics, and statistics; the program enrolls…

While the majority of STEM persistence has focused on outcomes for first-year students, there has been little investigation into the outcomes for peer mentors. Of the studies conducted, results are promising. Benefits for peer mentors include a change in their perceptions on teaching and learning; an improvement in their communication,…

Learning progressions (LPs) present a potential tool to guide students toward deeper understanding of core concepts as they move through a curriculum. In addition to providing a theoretical scheme for education researchers, LPs can provide a powerful framework for instructors and students in organizing curricula. We have developed the outline of a…

Peer learning programs have been developed to support many introductory science courses by providing additional instruction and engagement. These programs are beneficial to both learners and instructors, providing content learning and confidence and attitudinal gains. There is evidence that the benefits of peer learning are higher when students…

As introductory college science courses transition from large, passive lectures to more student-centered active learning environments, additional instructional support may be needed. Peer Learning Assistants (PLAs) can aid course transformations by helping facilitate active learning and peer engagement among students in the classroom. Pedagogical…

Learning Assistants (LAs) help students develop a deeper understanding of content and are particularly effective during active learning instruction. A foundational pillar of the LA model is the LA pedagogy course, which teaches LAs about evidence-based instruction and about how students learn (Otero et al., 2010). From LA survey responses, this…

Learning assistant (LA) programs have become increasingly popular at large universities striving to promote student engagement in the classroom. The LA program at the Pennsylvania State University was initiated in 2012 and has rapidly grown to over 500 LA positions per year. The purpose of this study was to gather LA and faculty member perceptions…

Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) is a small-group, collaborative problem-solving model that has significantly increased student performance in a variety of chemistry undergraduate courses and other STEM courses. Cyber Peer-Led Team Learning (cPLTL), an online adaptation of PLTL, has been effective in general chemistry courses, but this study was the…

This article reports the findings of the Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) model intervention study in an introductory biology course at a Puerto Rican private university. PLTL introduces to the traditional class format an additional workshop session in which students interact in small groups to solve challenging exercises under the guidance of a peer…

An institutionalized program of peer-led study groups (PLSG) adds instructional power to our large-enrollment introductory organic chemistry courses. Concomitantly, there is a challenge to keep the instructional philosophy and subject matter coherent with the faculty expectations and goals across this diverse group of undergraduate instructors.…

While research has demonstrated the links between active learning and student success, lecture remains a dominant instructional method within introductory STEM courses. In this project, we used the strategy of enlisting peer mentors to develop and facilitate active learning modules within introductory computer science. First, we describe the…

This article describes how a Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) program was implemented in a first-year, undergraduate Anatomy and Physiology course sequence to examine the student perceptions of the program and determine the effects of PLTL on student performance.

In late 2011, we created a Peer-Assisted Learning (PAL) program focused on improving student performance in high-risk STEM courses. Our PALs are modeled after the Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) program, which has been shown to provide long- and short-term benefits to both students (Chan & Bauer, 2015; Gosser, Kampeier, & Pratibha, 2010;…