Peer to peer: benefits of P2P in science
by David Bradley
If you find your Professor intimidating and
don't want to lose face asking seemingly naive questions about a course or
your research, who can you turn to? A peer mentor might be the answer.
Peer-mentoring schemes have been around since ancient times, they even get
a mention in Greek texts, but today they are becoming increasingly popular
in academic environments as educators begin to recognise the benefits for
their students of learning with a little help from their friends.
Such a scheme could readily be initiated at the common-or-garden freshmen
social or orientation events. During this process, which may take some time,
you can always look to resources outside of the university to find a tutor
so you don't fall behind.
Sharing resources
So what is peer mentoring and what's in it for you? The system usually
involves coupling older students with their younger peers to make, as one
recent graduate, Joe Branch, describes it a 'Big Brother/Big Sister'
program. The system provides the, often younger, student with a better
insight into their course and how to get the most out of their time.
Conversely, the peer mentors themselves learn invaluable skills in
handling people.
There are numerous universities now running peer-mentoring schemes in the
US and, increasingly, in Europe and the UK. They often come in different
guises with various names - peer-assisted learning and paired learning are
popular alternative names although some advocates would argue they are not
quite synonyms. 'In Peer Assisted Learning, there is a deliberate intent
to help another person or persons with their own learning goals,' explains
Keith Topping, an educational psychologist at the University of Dundee in
Scotland. 'Within this over-arching principle, PAL includes a number of
different methods: peer tutoring, peer mentoring, peer modeling, peer
education, peer counseling, peer monitoring, and peer assessment,' he
adds. The International Mentoring Association hosted by Western Michigan
University provides a good starting point for finding out more details and
background on the various flavors.
Under obligation
If your faculty is already running a scheme then it
is not such a big step to get involved. Indeed, you might be obliged to
hook up with a peer mentor as part of your course structure. Faculty
administrators will usually pair up a mentor and a younger student with
common backgrounds in research, career interests, regional and ethnic
backgrounds, and sometimes gender. One of the most straightforward and
functional peer mentor systems might not even rely on sharing a course or
research group. According to Janice Baker of London Guildhall University,
'We run a buddy scheme for English-speaking students to help students
using English as a second language to upgrade their written work,' she
says.
But, where peer mentoring comes into its own is in helping students
develop their own skill-set and in getting to grips with their course and
research. Fellow students are, after all, uniquely qualified to empathise
and inspire. While that intimidating Professor in a white coat with the
stereotypical wacky hair may not be entirely approachable for the most
trivial of problems, a student colleague just a year or two further on
might offer a friendlier face and help their 'junior' colleague find their
own solutions.
'It is a safe place to air understandings and misunderstandings - it is
where students realise that everyone else is having the same problem with
understanding that they are,' explains Maureen Donelan of University
College London, which runs peer mentoring in the maths, physics and
biochemistry departments. This is a task that no tutor can do - tutors are
often so far removed from the memory of the problems of student days that
they can no longer empathise in the way that fellow students who have just
been through the process can. 'The students are often the ones who
initiate peer mentoring because they find the faculty tending to give old
and/or misleading information,' adds Branch, 'they were often looking out
for themselves. How often would a person in aerospace engineering or
history tell you the job market is tight?' he questions.
Graduate approval
Emma Coe helped set-up the peer-mentoring project in
science at Manchester University in England: 'Most of our postgraduate
peer mentoring is conducted by graduate students for graduate students,'
she explains, 'the basic idea of peer mentoring is straightforward -
experienced graduate students are assigned small groups of those less
experienced.' She adds that the mentees can turn to their mentor with all
kinds of queries to find out how to get hold of particular bits of
information, for help, for advice and basically for general support and
encouragement. The mentors on their part act more as guides than teachers.
Indeed some peer-mentoring schemes are set-up so that 'teaching' as such
is as disallowed as it ultimately benefits neither party.
The whole system, whether formal or ad hoc, is a double-edged sword. Both
mentor and mentee can gain a lot from a peer-mentoring program. 'Mentors
experience leading a group, learn facilitation techniques, teamwork,
empathy and communication skills as well as valuable revision,' explains
Donelan. 'Employers,' she adds, 'are very interested in these schemes,
because students provide evidence of transferable skills obtained in an
innovative way.' It is often more difficult to encourage freshmen to join
in because they often perceive the system as remedial, which it is not.
Careering ahead
Peer mentoring can also help the younger students
define their career goals although there is generally no explicit
component of the various systems for this aspect of personal development.
'Through talking as a group and having mentors share experiences of their
own goals and next steps,' explains Coe, 'students might discover some of
the choices open to them.' Career guidance, per se, usually comes under a
separate umbrella but just talking to other graduate students and mentors
can be a helpful way of sounding out ideas and hearing of useful
opportunities or finding out about networks.
Traditional tutoring systems often fail because of staff shortages. A
peer-mentoring program can even help solve such problems by integrating
new students into a university and the way of life. The mentors benefit
from the added responsibility and the opportunity to put something back
into the system without simply adding to the workloads of overburdened
tutors and administrators. 'The advantages of this are huge,' enthuses
Donelan, 'students are a university's most under-used resource, and have
an immense amount to give, and when given the responsibility they rise to
the challenge.'
Often there is some kind of remuneration or course credit for mentors
taking part in these schemes. Topping says that in some schemes mentors
can simply be interested volunteers, or have the inducement of course or
other credit for tutoring. In the US, he points out, it is more usual that
senior student mentors would receive some payment. 'But,' he warns, 'if
you pay, you might not get the best-motivated helpers.'
A department hoping to run a peer-mentoring scheme should offer workshops
within the program to assist both mentors and their 'charges'. Mentors can
learn about their role and what a mentee might expect, how to communicate
effectively and how to maintain the relationship. In the peer-mentoring
Workshop Model at CUNY, students who have done well in their classes
become guides and mentors to small groups of between six and eight fellow
students. This is at the undergraduate level and peer mentors here are
actually within the same year group. The peer-led groups meet weekly and
work on carefully structured problems. The supportive environment provided
by this arrangement helps each student build his or her understanding of
science.
There are several key components of the CUNY system that are equally
applicable to a mentoring scheme anywhere: the workshops become a regular
course component, the faculty teaching the course are heavily involved,
from the sidelines, and peer mentors undergo training and are closely
supervised. With particular attention being paid to mentor knowledge and
teaching and learning techniques everyone benefits.
If your department or faculty does not have a peer mentoring scheme in
place there might just be a chance to be proactive. The easiest and most
obvious tack is to approach your student society and see whether it might
be possible to implement an informal 'buddying' scheme for new research
students, for instance. Such a scheme could readily be initiated at the
common-or-garden freshmen social or orientation events.
Alternative to tradition
Traditional mentors do not always provide the best
learning 'assistants' for young research students. 'I would never knock
the personal tutoring system,' emphasises Donelan, 'which I think is also
vital, but which plays a different role - that of loco parentis, whereas
the fellow student is a role model.' Structured peer mentoring at the
graduate student level is relatively new but is breaking with tradition
and comments from postgrads underscore how valuable it can be. 'I met
people I wouldn't normally come into contact with and also had someone to
turn to for advice,' said one Manchester University scientist. Others
mention 'encouragement, 'reassurance that it is common not to get many
results in the first year,' 'gaining advice on seminar presentations,' and
'introductions to people in the department,' as important to their
experience of peer mentoring.
Rather than finding yourself the junior partner in a long-term
'tutor-student' relationship your supervisor or department may set you up
with a peer mentor, if such as scheme does not yet exist at your
institution it might be worth bring the idea to the attention of the
Prof...or asking an older student to do that for you.
You could soon be mentored by a friend.
This article originally appeared in BioMedNet's HMSBeagle in my regular
Adapt or Die column.