Greetings Fellow Educators,
One of the great things about this forum is the chance to network with clever and invested people who really care about analytics education. At the end of September we had our first online session with a talk from Xue Zhou from Queen Mary University of London
She described a scheme to embed Peer Led Teaching & Learning (PLTL) which has had remarkable results in improving not only grades but engagement as well. We could not record but I have summarised the event in this post.
Many of us have tried Peer Led Learning (PLL) where students help others, perhaps in lower years or different programmes, to engage effectively with learning in the classroom. Maybe you have tried mentoring programmes where students mentor others in modules previously undertaken? These are often undertaken with some level of recognition given to the peers and some learning activities to help guide their mentoring.
With PLTL the peer guide students are given lessons in education to help them understand effective teaching techniques and they study research about how others learn. In some schemes they are also paid for their work and in all schemes they are given recognition for their teaching work and their learning.
Xue described how her cohort had enthusiastically undertaken the learning required and how this year the places to become peers were over subscribed! After completing their education courses the peers were allocated workshop times which ran beside the usual seminars and which other students subscribed to, these would run with work designed to encourage exploration of the themes being learned in lectures and seminars. There were several workshop themes the peers could choose from and they were coached in how to use them.
The peer led workshops had high attendance throughout the term and those who attended had improved grades compared to previous years. Best of all the students and peers felt they gained from the experience and enjoyed the sessions.
I wonder if part of the effect was not only working alongside peers in a collegiate and enjoyable atmosphere but also the opportunity to talk about analytics in a way which fostered an analytical mindset. Jo Boaler https://profiles.stanford.edu/jo-boaler has written extensively about the need to create a 'Mathematical Mindset' when teaching mathematics to foster both a love of maths and to encourage those who find it hard or who don't believe they have any ability. This is done by helping to create a growth mindset in the classroom and by giving students the chance to reflect on and discuss ideas.
In the case of Xue's PLTL groups the students were given subjects which required them to work together, to discuss ideas and data, and to explore the themes they had been taught to see if any applied and would give interesting and relevant results. This affords an opportunity to open up ideas to a deeper level and to apply learning in creative ways. There is a high level of trust shown by the teacher, who is not present, and to have agency in the way the analytics are applied. The students need to reflect and discuss as a group to achieve their aims, which is much more like a real world situation where one might apply analytical thinking to a problem. The peer, freshly armed with their educational tuition, is able to steer this enterprise whilst remaining an active and engaged participant themselves.
Xue is going to be doing more work in this vein and I hope she will come and talk to the BAEF again about what she has discovered. I think you'll agree that this type of pedagogic research is incredibly important in the field of business analytics and I hope that we've given you some ideas for enhancing your pedagogic approach.
Best, C