Peer Assisted Learning & Facilitation Dr Neil Speirs
Aims & Outcomes This session will describe what PAL is, its comprehensive nature and its origins in secondary education. It will also consider what facilitation is and how to excel in your role as a facilitator. This will be assisted by considering your experiences of directive learning and how this contrasts with the facilitative environment.
Learning Outcomes; • • • • • •
To understand what peer assisted learning is. To understand how peer assisted learning functions at Edinburgh. To understand your role as a facilitator. To understand what directive learning is. To understand how facilitation differs to the directive approach. To know and be aware of how to employ, a wide range of facilitative techniques in your academic school’s PAL programme.
Your Experience
Discuss, with the person next to you, any experience you have had working with junior learners.
Origins The origins of peer assisted learning (PAL), in the UK, can be found in secondary education.
Senior peers would work with junior partners in the classroom, exchanging learning habits and strategies.
Not only does the junior partner develop through this interaction but also the senior helper.
Depending on the type of scheme being employed, the peer can be more or less actively engaged with their junior partner in order to successfully achieve aims.
Aims A peer assisted learning scheme (PALs) will generally aim to facilitate one or a combination of each of the following outcomes;
The acquisition of knowledge (what I know) The acquisition of skills (what I can do) Developing motivation (how much I want to be able to know and do) Developing confidence (my belief that I am able to know and do)
Question: Which of the above are relevant to your PALs?
Aims There are a number of different types of peer assisted learning. Each one can deliver the above outcomes to varying degrees. So it is important to consider the aims of particular PALs before choosing the type that is to be employed. The most common types of PAL are listed;
Peer Tutoring Peer Modeling Peer Education Peer Monitoring Peer Counselling Peer Assessment
Question: Can you give an example of these different types of PAL? Which are relevant to your scheme?
Our Version PAL at the University of Edinburgh draws on a blended approach, using suitable aspects of some of the above types, generally this would not include tutoring and assessment. As a result ‘the acquisition of knowledge’ is not what such schemes in Edinburgh focus on, rather the three other areas of skills, motivation and confidence. Some of the aspects that can be facilitated by PAL at Edinburgh include; The modeling of enthusiasm, effort and cooperation (peer modelling) Discussion of material in an informal group setting (peer education)
Observing and providing feedback on learning strategies (peer monitoring) Providing insight on general student life (peer counselling)
It’s Not Directive Your job in PAL is the assisting. The way in which you assist, is to facilitate.
Your behaviour as a facilitator will be very different from that of a teacher. Unlike a teacher, the facilitator is neither the source of information nor the leader of the learners; rather you will keep the group focussed on their tasks and guide them to completion. Many find this unnerving as their experience is limited to being in a teaching environment and rarely a facilitative one.
It’s Not Directive It is important that you draw back from the desire to be directive and teach and remember you are to focus on enhancing student centred self-directed learning.
The instinct to teach will be minimised if you remember the aims of your PALs, the acquisition of knowledge [curriculum related] is not part of any scheme here in Edinburgh. Barrows wrote in 1980 that; ‘A faculty person who is a good facilitator can successfully facilitate in any area.’
How do I become a good facilitator? Gilkison’s study of expert and non-expert staff facilitating problem based learning (PBL) classes in medical degree programmes is of relevance in understanding how to facilitate.
The study considered when PBL class leaders intervene in the PBL tutorial, what techniques do they use, and what effects do their interventions have?
How do I become a good facilitator? Elicitation always involved the staff member asking a question, in most cases generally to the group as a whole, but occasionally by directly questioning one student; an elicitation was an event that required a verbal response from the students.
Prompting was a technique used to gather more information, or to get the students to expand on something they had not fully explained.
When the students were wandering off the subject, or dwelling on a minor point, the staff members used re-focusing to bring the students back to the topic or the case scenario.
How do I become a good facilitator? Evaluating refers to comments made by the staff member to evaluate the group process, or to evaluate individual students.
Summarising refers to the staff member summarising a section of discussion; this usually signalled the closing of one topic before the group moved on to the next.
Giving feedback occurred when the tutor confirmed that she had heard or seen an appropriate response.
You should reflect on these techniques that were employed and consider how you can use these in your PAL sessions.
How do I become a good facilitator?
How do I become a good facilitator? Three main categories of PBL tutor interventions were thus identified by the study;
Raising critical awareness Exchanges which included elicitation, re-elicitation and sometimes prompting were used by the PBL tutor in response to inadequate explanation, gaps in students’ knowledge, or inconsistencies in their thinking. The effect of this technique was to expand the group discussion on to a higher cognitive level. Students began to think about thinking, or meta-cognition.
How do I become a good facilitator? Three main categories of PBL tutor interventions were thus identified by the study;
Facilitating the group process Exchanges which included facilitating, refocusing, summarising, feedback and evaluation were used in response to students going off the topic, or to maintain group dynamics. They had the function of keeping students on task and focused on their learning objectives or the scenario, and ensuring that the group process flowed well.
How do I become a good facilitator? Three main categories of PBL tutor interventions were thus identified by the study;
Directing learning Events which included informing or directing learning were used infrequently. These interventions effectively blocked a line of discussion, signalling an end to the students’ discussion of a topic. No response was required from the students.
How do I become a good facilitator?
How do I become a good facilitator? During your role as a facilitator it is useful to think about how you are facilitating your group. There are three operational modes of facilitation;
Hierarchical mode The facilitator consults the group and then the facilitator decides.
Co-operative mode The facilitator consults the group and then decides with the group.
Autonomous mode
The facilitator supports the group and then the group decides.