Peer influence in academic settings can have significant positive effects on student learners. Examples of peer support of academic endeavors, most notably tutoring, date back to the colonial period of U.S. higher education and persist today. However, over the years, peer education has evolved from being a marginal endeavor in which academic…

We implemented peer instruction in an introductory level conceptual physics course for nonscience majors on the basis of the success others reported with this method. We expected to see that learning from peer conversation, as evidenced by answering conceptual questions correctly following discussion, would correlate with course grade, but we did…

Collaborative and problem-based learning strategies are theorized to be effective methods for strengthening undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) is a collaborative learning technique that engages students in problem solving and discussion under the guidance of a trained peer…

The use of science classroom discourse analysis as a way to gain a better understanding of various student cognitive outcomes has a rich history in Science Education in general and Physics Education Research (PER) in particular. When students talk to each other in a collaborative peer instruction environment, such as in the CLASP classes…

This design experiment aimed to answer the question of how to mediate the practices of authentic science inquiries in primary education. An instructional approach based on activity theory was designed and carried out with multi-age students in a small village school. An open-ended learning task was offered to the older students. Their task was to…

In the knowledge economy, many companies are well aware of the vital need to maintain the professional expertise of their workers at a high level. Though there have been a lot of research studies in the areas of professional expertise and workplace learning, few examined the learning pathways novice workers went through to become experts in their…

This article reports on a one-year research project that used peer coaching and collaboration between two reading professors to study the effects of collaborative classroom activities on student engagement. In order to address professors' concerns about student participation, two undergraduate reading-methods classes were revised through the…

In 1991 when Diana George, Ed Lotto, and the author were publishing their first issue as "WCJ" editors, this multivoiced essay struck her as a prime example of their editorial belief that writing centers could be "agents of change in the academy." As Gail Okawa and Tom Fox observe, "Most universities are inhospitable to more democratic definitions…

This paper describes a collaborative action research study in which peer assisted learning was deployed simultaneously across a range of disciplines in two institutes of technology in Ireland. The aim of the research was to determine if peer assisted learning enhances the learning experience of first year participants. An action research approach…

Students in two iterations of a statistics course were required to develop work-related research questions that could be analyzed by the statistical techniques discussed in class. They were also expected to present the question and other research design components in a manner that could be comprehended by statistical novices. To provide sufficient…

The current study explored the effects of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' proficiency level on English-medium instruction (EMI) in an online tutoring project. Sixteen Taiwanese college students (tutees) collaborated with preservice teachers (tutors) in the United States in an EMI online tutorial project. The online tutor-tutee…

The freshman academic year is one of the most difficult years that a medical student experiences in his/her academic life at a medical school. Freshmen are frequently faced with several challenges, such as adaptation to a new academic environment and its associated different methods of teaching, learning, skills, and assessment. The aim of this…

The purpose of this qualitative study is to inform and advance the body of knowledge of the contribution that "Peer Assisted Study Sessions" (PASS) provides for student leaders in terms of its impact on their self-efficacy--the personal belief in competence to succeed within certain situations (Bandura, 1986). To date, there has been…

The increasing diversity in students' enrolment in higher education in Norway offers an opportunity to use collaborative learning and teamwork as a learning vehicle to exploit the synergy in the community to have formal and informal "agoras". Theoretical and empirical observation of the value of team processes provides the framework to…

Jane E. Pollock, coauthor of "Classroom Instruction That Works," expands on the bestseller's feedback strategy in this groundbreaking work. While feedback is not a new concept, what is new is using it the way children use computer apps--to set goals, track their progress, and self-regulate their own learning. With only a slight shift in…