Psychology students experiences of peer tutoring at the

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• Psychology students experiences of peer tutoring
  at the
• London Metropolitan University Writing Centre
• Savita Bakhshi, Kathy Harrington and Peter
  ONeill
• London Metropolitan University

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Background

• Initiative of Write Now Centre for Excellence in
  Teaching and Learning (CETL).
• Collaborating institutions Liverpool Hope
  University and Aston University.
• Aims of Write Now
• Enrich students' learning experiences through the
  development of innovative, evidence-based
  provision focused on writing for assessment.
• Celebrate and promote student writing in the
  disciplines, enabling students to develop
  academic and disciplinary identities as
  empowered, confident writers.
• 5 years funding from Higher Education Funding
  Council for England (HEFCE) 2005-2010.

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London Met Writing Centre

• Opened in October 2006, based in the Department
  of Psychology
• Student Writing Mentor Scheme
• Objectives
• Avoid institutional duplication (existing
  Learning Development Unit)
• Offer something innovative in context of UK
  writing support where peer tutoring is very rare
• Evaluate a model of student-led writing support
  that might be implemented in other Higher
  Education institutions
• The scheme is collaborative in approach and its
  purpose is to enable students to become confident
  and competent academic writers in their
  disciplines.
• The scheme is open to all LMU students across
  different disciplines, including psychology.
• Over 1300 tutorials were conducted with students
  from various disciplines in the first year and a
  half of operation, and around 20 of students who
  used the Mentor Scheme were in Psychology.

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Students helping students with writing a
rationale

• Fundamental connection between writing and
  thinking.
• Reflective thought is public or social
  conversation internalised (Vygotsky, 1986)
• If thought is internalised public and social
  talk, then writing of all kinds is internalised
  social talk made public and social again. If
  thought is internalised conversation, then
  writing is internalised conversation
  re-externalised. (Bruffee, 1984 641)
• It follows that engaging students in constructive
  conversation about their ideas and their writing
  is likely to lead to better thinking and
  therefore to better writing.
• Undergraduate peer tutors have long been
  widespread in Writing Centres in North America,
  but there are only a few Writing Centres or
  dedicated writing support schemes in the UK,
  which adopt the North American peer tutoring
  approach.

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Peer collaboration

• The focus is on being
• Collaborative, Non-directive, Non-hierarchical
• Not a content-oriented focus
• For collaboration to be real, there must be an
  attempt to reduce as far as possible the
  hierarchies inherent in the university (cf.
  Lunsford, 1991).
• As such trained undergraduate peer tutors likely
  to be ideal facilitators of collaborative
  learning in fellow students.
• Collaborative peer tutorials in writing as an
  excellent means of getting students engaged in
  their writing of cutting through doubts and
  getting them to actually do something.
• Tutoring in writing is intervention in
  the composing process. Writers come to the
  writing centre sometime during the writing of
  something looking for help. Often, they dont
  know what kind of help is available,
  practicable, or sensible. They seem to think
  that tutoring in writing means either coming to
  know something new or getting something done to
  or for them. In fact, though, they need help
  doing something (North, 1982 434)

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Peer writing collaborators and Academic
Literacies

• Doing away with study skills
• Real understanding of the complexities of
  disciplinary writing can only be achieved within
  the subject and through explanations, modelling
  and feedback by subject tutors (Wingate, 2006
  463)
• OUR HYPOTHESIS
• Students who are themselves engaged with coming
  to terms with the complexities of their
  disciplinary discourse also have a role to play
  in helping other students
• Moreover, they are close enough to their peers to
  recognise the confusions that they are going
  through, confusions which may not be so apparent
  to a lecturer who has thoroughly internalised the
  epistemology of her or his discipline
• Collaborating working together might be even
  more effective for real understanding than
  explanations, modelling and feedback

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What happens in a tutorial?

• I walked into the tutorial full of half-ideas,
  and walked out of the tutorial with fully-formed,
  fully-structured ideas, a good plan in my head of
  how the assignment would be formed, and two sides
  of rough notes which included the majority of the
  things I included in my final draft!I was able
  to discuss my ideas, basically verbalise them to
  the mentor, and by having to put them into words
  to tell someone, I also had to sort of explain
  them internally myself in a clear fashion, which
  I hadn't done up to that point. So I left the
  tutorial with a crystal clear idea of exactly how
  I would go about writing up this assignment,
  things and ideas I would include, and also places
  to look for more information and areas I needed
  to research more! I am really happy that I went
  students are so lucky to have this service, and I
  definitely intend on using the writing centre for
  myself! 
•  

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Is there a need for peer interaction in
Psychology?

• Some research conducted on peer interaction in
  Psychology
• Peer e-mentoring (Hixenbaugh, Dewart, Drees and
  Williams, 2005)
• Critical thinking skills (Anderson and Soden,
  2001)
• Learning methods (Rae and Baillie, 2005)
• Statistics (Helman and Horswill, 2002)
• Peer mentoring (Hill and Reddy, 2007)
• Benefits for
• Students
• Mentors
• Lecturers
• Ill be somebody to chat to and to ask
  questions. Somebody thats on par with them and
  not a lecturer, somebody thats been through it
  
• (Hill and Reddy, 2007)

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Peer mentoring in Psychology

• We argue there is a need for peer mentoring in
  psychology because
• Psychology is a writing-intensive science subject
  (i.e. essays, scientific reports, dissertations,
  case studies, etc).
• Students may also need help with general writing
  (i.e. grammar, punctuation, etc), as identified
  by Psychology lecturers (see Newman, 2007).
• See quote (previous slide)
• Writing in an academically literate way according
  to the expectations of the discipline (including
  use of APA style) is essential to doing well as a
  student in Psychology.
• The focus is on being
• Collaborative, Non-directive, Non-hierarchical

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The aims of this session

• This session reports on undergraduate and
  postgraduate Psychology student experiences of
  participating in the Student Writing Mentor
  Scheme and using the Writing Centre during the
  first year and a half of operation.
• The evaluation will
• Assess the degree to which students felt that the
  Writing Mentors and the Writing Centre provided
  an environment supportive of their own writing
  development,
• Identify the key factors that shaped the
  students experiences of this new form of writing
  support provided by the University.
• The evaluation will be based on data collected
  through an online questionnaire.

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The aims of this session (cont)

• We will report our findings in relation to the
  following categories
• Motivations for using the Scheme
• Specific writing concerns, actual experiences,
  and post-tutorials views of Scheme
• Nature of relationship between student and Mentor
• Students attitudes towards their own writing
  before and after participating in the Scheme.

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Our sample

• Gender distribution Females (81), Males (19)
• Native languages other than English 71
• Studying a variety of different subjects,
  including
• Psychology (26)
• Art and Design (14)
• IT, Media and Communications (10)
• IR and Politics (7)
• Undergraduate (75), postgraduate (21)
• This sample is largely representative of the
  students who visited the Writing Centre in
  2006-07.
• This presentation will focus on Psychology
  students responses and will compare their
  responses to the overall sample where
  appropriate.

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a. Motivations for using the Scheme

• Being able to talk about their writing with
  someone else and wanting encouragement to stay
  motivated were the most important reasons for
  Psychology students for booking their first
  tutorial.

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b. Specific writing concerns, actual experiences,
and post-tutorials views of Scheme
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b. Specific writing concerns, actual experiences,
and post-tutorials views of Scheme (cont)
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b. Specific writing concerns, actual experiences,
and post-tutorials views of Scheme (cont)

• There were some major differences in the degree
  of overall satisfaction experienced by the whole
  sample and psychology students with the
  tutorials.
• Whereas 91 of the total sample was satisfied or
  very satisfied with their tutorials, only 35 of
  psychology students were happy with their
  sessions.
• Any ideas why these differences may exist?

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c. Nature of relationship between student and
Mentor

• Overall, Psychology students found it very or
  fairly helpful to have a Writing Mentor from the
  same subject area (90), compared to the total
  sample (68.8).
• Further, 26.3 found it little or not at all
  helpful having a Writing Mentor from a subject
  area other than Psychology (26.3), similar to
  the total sample (23.8).

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d. Students attitudes towards their own writing
before and after participating in the Scheme
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d. Students attitudes towards their own writing
before and after participating in the Scheme

• Figure 8 shows that students confidence levels
  rose after visiting the Writing Centre.

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Conclusions

• We found evidence of
• Students visiting the Writing Centre because they
  wanted to talk about their writing with someone
  and wanted assurance that they were on the right
  track with their assignments.
• Psychology students wanted Writing Mentors in
  their own subject understandable in UK context
  of disciplinary degrees.
• Student perception that the Writing Centre helped
  them develop their writing.
• Considerable student satisfaction.
• Psychology students were less satisfied with the
  tutorials they had, compared to the overall
  sample- any thoughts on why perceptions differ?
• Increased student confidence about their own
  writing.

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Where do we go from here?

• Research into
• The relationship between participation in the
  Writing Mentor Scheme and student achievement
  for both Mentors and students.
• Longitudinal intervention study to assess the
  impact of the Writing Centre on student
  performance.
• Using quantitative and qualitative methods
• Collaboration with staff to develop assessment
  tools for different disciplines
• Observation and recording of tutorials
• Content analysis of student writing, using
  discipline-specific assessment criteria
• Correlation with essay and examination grades
• Any ideas?

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References

• Anderson, T., and Soden, R. (2001). Peer
  interaction and the learning f critical thinking
  skills. Psychology Learning and Teaching, 1 (1),
  37-40.
• Bruffee, K. A. (1984). Collaborative learning and
  the conversation of mankind. College English,
  46, 635-52.
• Helman, S. and Horswill, M. S. (2002). Does the
  introduction of non-traditional teaching
  techniques improve psychology undergraduates'
  performance in statistics? Psychology Learning
  and Teaching, 2 (1), 12-16.
• Hill, R., and Reddy, P. (2007). Undergraduate
  peer mentoring an investigation into processes,
  acivities and outcomes. Psychology Learning and
  Teaching, 6 (2), 98- 103.
• Hixenbaugh, P., Dewart, H., Drees, D., and
  Williams, D. (2005). Peer e-mentoring
  enhancement of the first year experience.
  Psychology Learning and Teaching, 5 (1), 8-14.
• Lunsford, A. (1991). Collaboration, Control, and
  the Idea of a Writing Center. The Writing Center
  Journal, 12.1, 3-10.
• Newman, M. (2007). Appalling writing skills
  drive tutors to seek help. Times Higher
  Education, 07 May 2007.
• North, S.M. (1982). Training Students to Talk
  about Writing. College Composition and
  Communication, 33, 434-441.
• Rae, J. Baillie, A. (2005). Peer tutoring and
  the study of psychology tutoring experience as a
  learning method. Psychology Teaching Review, 11
  (1), 53.
• Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and Language,
  revised and edited by A. Kozulin, Cambridge,
  Mass MIT Press.
• Wingate, U. (2006). Doing away with study
  skills. Teaching in Higher Education, 11,
  457-69.

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www.writenow.ac.uk Centre for Excellence in
Teaching Learning Savita Bakhshi
s.bakhshi_at_londonmet.ac.uk