Peer-to-Peer Learning: Benefits and Strategies

This assignment delves into the advantages of peer-to-peer learning as an educational approach. It highlights how this method fosters student independence by reducing overreliance on teachers and encouraging collaboration and self-assessment. The paper recommends integrating peer-to-peer education into curricula to enhance academic achievement, social competence, and individual learning experiences. Specific strategies for effective implementation are discussed.

Running head: PEER-TO-PEER LEARNING 1
Peer-To-Peer Learning
Name
Institution

PEER-TO-PEER LEARNING 2
PEER-TO-PEER LEARNING
Executive Summary
The main questions discussed in this report are (i) how can peer-peer learning promote
learners’ independence; and (ii) how best can learners utilize the experience of their peers? A
detailed analysis and discussion on the two questions have been presented in this paper. It is
noted that peer-to-peer learning has potential benefits to both tutor and tutee. It promotes the
independence of learners as it lessen the time the teachers take with their students and devote
such times to peer-to-peer learning activities. Students have also been shown to best utilize the
experience of their peers by taking them as their role model and working towards to achieving
what their tutors have achieved. Collaboration has been highlighted as the key to maximum
benefit from the peer-to-peer learning approach.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Results and Discussion....................................................................................................................5
Key Points of Analysis.................................................................................................................5
How can peer-to-peer learning promote student independence?.................................................5
How can student best utilize the experience of their fellow students?........................................7
Recommendations............................................................................................................................8
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

PEER-TO-PEER LEARNING 4
Introduction
Peer-to-peer learning is an approach to teaching/learning whereby one learner gives
instructions to peers in the material upon which former is the expert while former is a beginner.
Peer-to-peer learning is never a novel concept. The concept is traceable back to the archons
utilization by Aristotle or the student leaders alongside to Seneca the Younger’s letters. The
concept initially framed as a theory from Scotsman Andrew Bell in the year 1795, and later
English and French schools embraced it in the nineteenth century. Over the previous thirty to
forty years, this method of learning has been increasingly famous together with mixed abilities
grouping in the K-12 public schools alongside the interest in increasingly financially-efficient
approach of learning.
Academic peer-peer learning can take various forms among them surrogate, proctoring,
cooperative learning and reciprocal peer tutoring (RPT). Surrogate learning is common at bigger
universities and entails providing older learners, usually graduates or senior undergraduates,
certain or all of learning/teaching roles/responsibilities for the courses of undergraduates.
Proctoring learning programs encompass one-on-one learning/tutoring by learners who are
slightly advanced of other fellow learners, or who have demonstrated successful proficiency with
material in the latest past. Cooperative learning encompass the division of peers into small
cohorts, with each individual in cohort responsible for teaching their fellows, and each
contributing a rare piece to the cohort performance on a given task. RRT remains an increasingly
specific kind of cooperative learning and group peers into pairs for tutoring each other.

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Results and Discussion
Key Points of Analysis
 Peer-to-peer learning is an effective approach in promoting learners independence
 Peer-to-peer learning makes the students best utilize the experience of their peers
 Students who participate in peer-to-peer learning show high academic achievement
 Students who participate in peer-to-peer learning needs to actively participate in the roles
as tutors and as tutees
How can peer-to-peer learning promote student independence?
Peer-to-peer is one of the most important strategy that foster student independence
thereby allowing the learners to enjoy fruitful interactions with others as well as actively
partaking in students’ school community. It is one of the ways through independent learning
skills are developed to improve the students’ outcomes. It takes the form of students’ self-
regulated and independent learning and hence a higher influence on the progress of the student. It
provides the learners with potential opportunities to self-monitor based on the process of
establishing goals as well as receiving feedback from fellow students and from oneself. Through
peer-tutoring, students are able to revise via the intervention of their peers once the peer-tutoring
has been assumed (Godwin-Jones, 2005).
The strategy enriches the production by having students confronting each other in the
learning process. It fosters the processes such as metacognitive awareness amongst the learners
own productions, especially epistemic monitoring as well as reflexive thinking for self-reliance.
The peer-to-peer learning process permits each learner to play a given role of tutor and tutored.

PEER-TO-PEER LEARNING 6
The student who use reciprocal peer tutoring will benefit from providing directions, evaluating as
well as providing bolstering for their colleagues. The strategy establishes a mutual help and
social support amongst the partaking students. Research on peer-to-peer mostly provide evidence
for fruitful impacts on learning, performance stress and anxiety reduction alongside a surge in
gratification with the progress (Yang, 2006).
The students will greatly benefit from the peer-to-peer learning in a number of ways that
promotes their independence. The learners always receive increased time for their individualized
learning. Also, peer-to-peer learning allows for straight interactions between the learners thereby
promoting active learning. The strategy further benefits the learners as the peer teachers reinforce
their individual learning by instructing their colleagues. The peer-to-peer learning makes the
learners to feel increasingly comfortable and open when interacting with their peers. The peers as
well as learners will share the identical discourse thereby permitting a greater understanding. The
strategy is also financially efficient option to hiring more members of staff. The teachers will
receive more time and hence focus on the next lesson as they leave the students on their own to
improve self-reliance among their students.
The reciprocal peer-to-peer learning program applied at the California State University
for example has helped the students in the huge introductory psychology course to meet with the
learners partners occasionally throughout the course in order to question one another as well as
discuss the major ideas for every unit of this course. This program has not only helped boost the
independence of the students but it has also increased the academic success and the increased the
social incorporation of the learners. This learning strategy has been extremely successful since
when the students in the Reciprocal Peer Tutoring (RPT) program abilities were compared with
the control learners that took part in the supplementary activities, the participants in the RPT

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indicated higher academic accomplishment on the unit tests, ranked themselves as increasingly
gratified with the class were effectively adjusted psychologically, and often utilized their RPT
colleagues as the supportive resource in this course.
How can student best utilize the experience of their fellow students?
The studies have shown that student in peer-to-peer learning utilize the experience of
their colleagues to become increasingly independent. The activities of peer-to-peer learning
characteristically yield positive outcomes for both the tutor and the tutee. These activities yield
better team-building spirit a well as increased supportive relationships. They also yield
psychological well-being, communication skills, social competence as well as self-esteem.
Further peer-to-peer activities leads to higher accomplishment alongside greater productivity on
the basis of the improved learning outcomes (Purser, Towndrow & Aranguiz, 2013).
The experience of the fellow students can best be utilized by other students to encourage
the highly motivated as well as well-prepared learners to become interested in pursuing studies
via skills development alongside exposure to first-hand experience. The tutor and tutees work
closely together to design as well as implement their studies (Mazur, 2017). The students can
benefit from their fellows’ experience for example where the surrogate teaching approach is used
with more experienced students like doctoral learners supervising the undergraduate learners.
This will inspire the undergraduate students by recognizing these doctoral students as their role
models and aim at achieving whatever their seniors have accomplished. Also, the junior learners
can optimally benefit from the senior students by reaching out to them for revision helps and
even some pieces of potential benefits.

PEER-TO-PEER LEARNING 8
To best utilize the experience of their peers, the students need to effectively collaborate
with each other. The educators have acknowledged the value of collaborative learning. The
learners do not effectively learn where there is no collaboration or in isolation. The students must
never be isolated receivers of knowledge in order to best benefit from the experience of their
peers. The learners must overcome any form of isolation to learn as well as write. The should
fully and actively partake the collaborative learning exercises including peer review workshops,
group presentation, collaborative research assignments, discussion groups and collaborative
papers. These are imperative constituents of the learners’ writing classrooms since they inspire
active learning, providing learners the potential opportunity to become increasingly deeply
involved/engaged with their writing as well as with each other (Comer, Clark & Canelas, 2014).
The learners can also benefit and best use the experience of other fellows when they
engage actively in both self and peer assessment. The self as well as peer assessment will be
based on revision and enhancement. By engaging in these assessments, the learners will
independently assess individually and other assess the progress of their fellows with confidence
instead of always depending on their teacher’s judgment. When learners self-and peer-asses, the
learners become actively engaged in learning course and their independence as well as
motivation/inspirations are enhanced (Biech, 2015). The students will in this case by utilizing the
experience of others to effectively look at their individual work, and judge the extent to which
their work display explicitly outlined goals/criterion thus able to effectively asses the quality of
own work and subsequently revise the work accordingly.
Recommendations
 Teachers should encourage peer-to-peer learning to promote students’ independence

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 Learners should always collaborate and cooperate in the collaborative learning as means
to best utilize the experience of their fellows
 Self-assessment and peer assessment must be encouraged as it will help student be
independent without overreliance on teachers
 Peer-to-peer education must always be integrated in class as an integral part of the
curriculum to improve both higher academic achievement and social competence and
independence
Conclusion
To this end, it is undoubtedly that peer-to-peer learning is an effective approach to
improve learners’ independence and remains increasingly attributed to higher and faster
academic achievement. By lessening the time that students take with their teachers, student get
extra time to be on their own and this detaches them from the overreliance on the teachers. In
essence, peer-to-peer learning should be effectively exploited to allow the students benefit from
the potential experience of their fellows. Since the students are more friendly and close to their
peers than the teachers, they will be able to open up to their peers on their learning disabilities
and challenges early enough to get the solutions. Thus, the report is penned off with a call to
action that learners should exploit the potential and promising opportunity that peer-to-peer
learning avails by ensuring that they actively collaborate and partake in every activity to best
utilize the experience of their fellows.

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References
Biech, E. (2015). Peer‐to‐Peer Learning. 101 Ways to Make Learning Active beyond the
Classroom, 204-212.
Comer, D. K., Clark, C. R., & Canelas, D. A. (2014). Writing to learn and learning to write
across the disciplines: Peer-to-peer writing in introductory-level MOOCs. The
International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 15(5).
Godwin-Jones, B. (2005). Messaging, gaming, peer-to-peer sharing: Language learning
strategies & tools for the millennial generation.
Mazur, E. (2017). Peer instruction. In Peer Instruction (pp. 9-19). Springer Spektrum, Berlin,
Heidelberg.
Purser, E. R., Towndrow, A., & Aranguiz, A. (2013). Realising the Potential of peer-to-peer
learning: Taming a MOOC with social media.
Yang, S. J. (2006). Context aware ubiquitous learning environments for peer-to-peer
collaborative learning. Educational Technology & Society, 9(1), 188-201.