Peer Teaching: An Aston Experiment

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Peer Teaching An Aston Experiment

• Amanda Poulton
• Information Specialist Engineering and Life
  Sciences

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Outline

• My teaching background
• Context
• CILIP teaching skills course
• Learning theory
• Redesign of sessions
• Reflections and recommendations
• The future at Aston

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My teaching background

• No formal teaching qualification
• Dissertation and optional module on user
  education during MA
• Teaching for six years
• Trial and error
• Interest in teaching and learning
• Member of ILTHE
• CILIP Teaching Skills course

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Context

• 180 Year 2 Pharmacy Undergraduates
• Hands-on
• Ten 2 hour sessions over 5 weeks
• Part of Module (indirectly linked to assignment)
• Worksheet-based

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Concerns

• Information overload
• Boredom
• Principles of searching
• Too many handouts/worksheets

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CILIP course Teaching Skills

• Focus on learner not teacher
• Consider learning theory
• Kolbs Experiential Learning Cycle
• Honey and Mumfords Learning Styles
• Practical application

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Kolbs Experiential Learning Cycle
Actual learning experience doing
Thinking about what happened
Comparing what learnt with what already known
Putting it into practice relevance
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Honey and Mumfords Learning Styles
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Honey and Mumfords Learning Styles

• Pragmatist
• Relevant and practical
• Try things out with support from an expert
• Given immediate opportunities to implement what
  learnt
• Problem solving
• Activists
• New experiences
• Have a go
• Problem solving
• Team work

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Honey and Mumfords Learning Styles

• Reflector
• Thinking things through
• Observation
• Paired discussions
• Opportunity to review and reflect
• Theorist
• Models and concepts
• Lectures
• Following step-by-step instructions
• Opportunity to ask questions and probe ideas

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The Learning Pyramid
Taken from http//www.tcde.tehama.k12.ca.us/pyram
id.pdf
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Redesign of sessions

• What am I trying to achieve?
• Principles of information retrieval
• Differences between full-text and bibliographic
  databases
• Skills can be applied to any database
• Reduce handouts
• More varied session

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Redesign of sessions

• One handout
• Brief introduction
• Demonstration of a database
• Practise (reflection) applying to assignment
• Teach a colleague from other group - discussion
• Practise (reflection) applying to assignment
• Apply to alternative database
• Summary

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Redesign of sessions
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Practicalities

• Two staff
• Two separate demonstrations require two separate
  locations
• Only possible with small groups
• Monitoring students NetOp School
• Odd numbers
• Latecomers

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Student comments

• What did you find valuable about the session?
• Opportunity to interact and share knowledge
  within group
• Chance to practice by ourselves
• Interaction with other students
• Having time to apply information
• Teaching each other what we learnt

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Reflections - positive

• More problem-based which reflects teaching at
  Aston
• Gets students thinking - more active learning
• Encourages discussion
• More engaged with the session
• Opportunity to find out student concerns and gaps
  in their knowledge
• Less repetitive for me as each session unique

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Reflections - negative

• Can never suit everyone's learning styles
• Classroom management
• Some students struggle whilst some advance
  quickly
• Not suitable for all resources, e.g. Beilstein
• Risk that students wont teach everything that
  was covered

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Recommendations

• Use variety of techniques
• Be aware that behaviour might be an issue and
  consider tactics to get class back on track
• Monitor students
• Have more advanced exercise prepared
• Provide contact details for follow-up
• Provide a checklist of what should be shown when
  teaching colleague

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The Future?

• Extended to Psychology
• Further subject areas
• Postgraduates
• Regular review
• Stay up-to-date with teaching and learning
  techniques
• Teaching and learning course for all Information
  Specialists