Lessons Learned From a PLTL-CS Program

The Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) approach has previously been shown to be effective in recruiting and retaining students, particularly under-represented students, in undergraduate introductory CS courses. In PLTL, small groups of students are led by an undergraduate peer and work together to solve problems related to CS. At Columbia University, the Columbia Emerging Scholars Program has used PLTL in an effort to increase enrollment in CS courses beyond the introductory level, and to increase the number of students who select Computer Science as their major, by demonstrating that CS is necessarily a collaborative activity that focuses more on problem solving and algorithmic thinking than on programming. Over the past five semesters, 68 students have completed the program, and preliminary results indicate that this program has had a positive effect on increasing participation in the major. This paper discusses our experiences of building and expanding the Columbia Emerging Scholars program, and addresses such topics as recruiting, training, scheduling, student behavior, and evaluation. We expect that this paper will provide a valuable set of lessons learned to other educators who seek to launch or grow a PLTL program at their institution as well

Lessons Learned From a PLTL-CS Program

The Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) approach has previously been shown to be effective in recruiting and retaining students, particularly under-represented students, in undergraduate introductory CS courses. In PLTL, small groups of students are led by an undergraduate peer and work together to solve problems related to CS. At Columbia University, the Columbia Emerging Scholars Program has used PLTL in an effort to increase enrollment in CS courses beyond the introductory level, and to increase the number of students who select Computer Science as their major, by demonstrating that CS is necessarily a collaborative activity that focuses more on problem solving and algorithmic thinking than on programming. Over the past five semesters, 68 students have completed the program, and preliminary results indicate that this program has had a positive effect on increasing participation in the major. This paper discusses our experiences of building and expanding the Columbia Emerging Scholars program, and addresses such topics as recruiting, training, scheduling, student behavior, and evaluation. We expect that this paper will provide a valuable set of lessons learned to other educators who seek to launch or grow a PLTL program at their institution as well

Emerging Scholars Program—A PLTL-CS Program That Increases Recruitment and Retention of Women in the Major

The Emerging Scholars Program (ESP) in Computer Science is a Peer Led Team Learning (PLTL) approach to bringing undergraduates new to the discipline together with peer mentors to work on computational problems, and to expose them to the broad array of disciplines within computer science. This program demonstrates that computer science is necessarily a collaborative activity that focuses more on problem solving and algorithmic thinking than on programming. In spring 2012 the computer science department at an urban research university university completed the 9th iteration of ESP, with 104 women and 36 men completing the program. Our evaluation data indicates that ESP increased enrollment in the computer science major. 47% of students who took ESP along with the introduction to computer programming course at the university study site during this study majored in computer science. In addition, survey results indicated that a large majority of students intended to take another computer science course, were enthusiastic about the program, and found the workshop topics exciting and engaging. Participants reported that they learned more about computer science in ESP, and would recommend ESP to others

A pilot study on the impact of teaching assistant led CS1 study sessions using Peer Instruction

James Madison University’s Computer Science program strives to be a student-centered learning environment with a focus on creating a community for undergraduate success. National data reveals computer science has the lowest student retention rate compared to other STEM majors. The National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) has compiled a list of ways to retain students in Computer Science. In particular, NCWIT calls for collaboration indicate that “a sense of belonging, or a feeling of fit, is important for supporting student interest and persistence.” One aspect of creating community is the department’s longstanding commitment to provide undergraduate teaching assistants (TAs). Traditionally, TAs provide one-on-one help in the classroom and also hold supplementary lab hours in the evenings to answer questions. As part of this honors project, we have developed a new program called “The Fourth Hour” to increase student retention. Led by TAs using Peer Instruction (PI), these weekly study sessions provide a structured review of introductory topics. The aim of this research is to discover if weekly study sessions promote an environment in which students feel an increased sense of belonging and improved course material retention. In the Fall 2019 semester, JMU offered ten sections of CS149, the introductory programming course, also known as “CS1” in the literature. Each section had approximately 30 students enrolled. Four TAs were chosen to lead one study session each week using the same lesson materials. Three attitudinal surveys were administered over the duration of the semester to collect data on student demographics, self-efficacy, and sense of belonging. Pre- and post assessment results were recorded to test student course material retention. Study session attendance was also collected to discern if there was a correlation with student demographics, self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and/or course material retention. Anomalies in the data and inconsistent attendance rates limited the statistical significance of our results. However, our qualitative analysis suggests that the study sessions had a positive impact on students. As a result, the CS department is planning to continue offering the Fourth Hour program

What Do Students Experience as Peer Leaders of Learning Teams?

In a course for engineering freshmen, peer leaders facilitated optional study sessions, which implemented peer-led team learning workshops. Some leaders were paid teaching assistants, but most were undergraduate volunteers. To understand the experiences of the peer leaders, we asked them to keep weekly reflective journals. By performing a basic qualitative analysis of fourteen journals from two semesters, we developed a description of the experience of leading peer-led team learning workshops over the course of the semester. At the beginning of the semester, the leaders were apprehensive about teaching and concerned with correctly answering students’ questions. As the semester progressed, the leaders were often frustrated with the difficulty of teaching, and the leaders tried new ways of encouraging student participation. At the end of the semester, the leaders reported that they increased self-confidence, developed an appreciation for intellectual diversity, and gained an increased interest in teaching

Talking Through the Problems: A Study of Discourse in Peer-Led Small Groups

Increasingly, studies are investigating the factors that influence student discourse in science courses, and specifically the mechanisms and discourse processes within small groups, to better understand the learning that takes place as students work together. This paper contributes to a growing body of research by analyzing how students engage in conversation and work together to solve problems in a peer-led small-group setting. This qualitative study evaluates video of Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) sessions in general chemistry, with attention to both the activity structures and the function of discourse as students undertook different types of problems across one semester. Our findings suggest that students talk their way through the problems; practicing a combination of regulative and instructional language to manage the group dynamics of their community of peer learners while developing and using specific disciplinary vocabulary. Additionally, student discourse patterns revealed a focus on the process of complex problem-solving, where students engage in joint decision-making by taking turns, questioning and explaining, and building on one another’s ideas. While students in our study engaged in less of the deeper, meaning-making discourse than expected, these observations about the function of language in small-group learning deepens an understanding of how PLTL and other types of small-group learning based on the tenets of social constructivism may lead to improvements in science education, with implications for the structure of small-group learning environments, problem design, and training of peer group leaders to encourage students to engage in more of the most effective discourse in these learning contexts

Promising Instructional Reforms in Developmental Education: A Case Study of Three Achieving the Dream Colleges

This report examines the experiences of three of the 83 colleges currently involved in the Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count project, an initiative of Lumina Foundation for Education, and their efforts to improve instruction in developmental education classrooms. Using the Achieving the Dream model as a framework, each college implemented a system of reforms aimed at reaching developmental learners who have a variety of skill levels and experiences

A COMPARISON OF FIRST-SEMESTER ORGANIC CHEMISTRY STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCES AND MASTERY OF CURVED-ARROW FORMALISM IN FACE-TO-FACE AND CYBER PEER-LED TEAM LEARNING

The cyber Peer-Led Team Learning (cPLTL) workshops are a synchronous online adaptation of the educational intervention PLTL, in which students, under the guidance of undergraduate peer facilitators, collaboratively solve problems in small groups. The purpose of this parallel convergent mixed methods study was to assess the impact of implementing cPLTL in an organic chemistry course on students’ workshop experiences, performance, and development of curved arrow formalism skills. Statistical analyses revealed comparable attendance rates, distribution of course grades, and achievement on American Chemical Society First-semester Organic Chemistry Exams. However, plotting workshop grades by AB, C, and DFW grade groupings revealed that PLTL students earned more successful grades than their cPLTL counterparts. Utilization of a new curved arrow formalism analytic framework for coding student interview artifacts revealed that cPLTL students were statistically less likely to successfully draw the product suggested by the curved arrows than their PLTL classmates. Both PLTL and cPLTL students exhibited a comparable incidence of relational to instrumental learning approaches. Similarly, both PLTL and cPLTL students were more likely to exhibit a common Scheme for Problem-Solving in Organic Chemistry (SPOC) than having dialogue that could be characterized by Toulmin’s Argumentation scheme. Lastly, implications for faculty are suggested, including: developing more explicit connections concept, mode, and reasoning components of understanding curved arrow formalism for organic chemistry students; optimizing graphical collaborative learning activities for online learners; and developing online students’ sense of community

Postsecondary peer cooperative learning programs: Annotated bibliography 2018

This 2018 annotated bibliography reviews seven postsecondary peer cooperative learning programs that have been implemented nationally and internationally to increase student achievement. An extensive literature search was conducted of published journal articles, newspaper accounts, book chapters, books, ERIC documents, thesis and dissertations, online documents, and unpublished reports. Peer learning programs in this bibliography meet the following characteristics: (a) program must have been implemented at the postsecondary or tertiary level, (b) program has a clear set of systematic procedures for its implementation at an institution, (c) program evaluation studies have been conducted and are available for review, (d) program intentionally embeds learning strategy practice along with a review of the academic content material, (e) program outcomes include both increased content knowledge with higher persistence rates, and (f) program has been replicated at another institution with similar positive student outcomes. From a review of the professional literature, nearly 1,500 citations emerged concerning seven programs that met the previously mentioned selection criteria: "Accelerated Learning Groups" (ALGs), "Emerging Scholars Program" (ESP), "Peer-Assisted Learning" (PAL), "Peer-Led Team Learning" (PLTL), "Structured Learning Assistance" (SLA), "Supplemental Instruction" (SI), and "Video-based Supplemental Instruction" (VSI). Nearly one fourth of the entries in this bibliography are from authors and researchers outside of United States. Guidance is provided to implement best practices of peer learning programs that can improve academic achievement, persistence to graduation, and professional growth of participants and facilitators of these student-led groups. The literature reports not only positive outcomes for the student participants of such programs, but includes outcomes for the student peer leaders of these academic support programs such as skill improvement with leadership, public speaking, and other employment skills along with an impact of their future vocational choices including a career in teaching at the secondary or postsecondary level. Educators need to investigate these peer learning programs to discover effective learning practices that can be adapted and adopted for use in supporting higher student achievement for students of diverse backgrounds. [This annotated bibliography is a revised and expanded version of ED565496, ED545639, ED489957, and ED574832

Building a Community of Practice: A Case Study of Introductory College Chemistry Students

Engagement in active learning and learning communities is important for persistence of STEM students early in their academic programs. Colleges and universities have an ongoing call to facilitate active learning techniques, yet large group, lecture-based instruction is still the prominent method of instruction. This qualitative case study examines interviews and classroom observations of undergraduate chemistry students enrolled at a primarily undergraduate institution. Critical educational elements were identified for chemistry students participating in a redesigned, introductory course which included a collaborative peer-lead learning experience. The participants engaged in required, weekly sessions structured around community building and active learning. The data were framed through a community of practice (CoP) framework, and emergent themes were centered on the following components: mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire. Findings show participant engagement created opportunities for collaboration beyond the required, weekly sessions, which included forming study groups and seeking assistance from chemistry tutors. Participants also shared study techniques based on a mutual understanding that effective learning required routine practice. Implications for STEM departments and researchers about implementing research-based curriculum are discussed