Teaching How-to: Chapter 4.3: Peer-to-Peer Learning and Collaboration

Peer-to-Peer Learning and Collaboration

Peer-to-peer learning, most commonly referred to as group work, offers a wide range of benefits for students. Research shows that it can help improve students’ learning outcomes and promote active engagement in the classroom (Davies, 2009). Collaborative work also enables students to take on larger, more complicated projects than they could manage individually.

Group work can be scaled according to your goals. You might assign a brief, in-class activity—for example, “Get in groups of three, and take ten minutes to list all the ways that X is related to Y”—or you can form long-term teams that work on a larger project for a week, a month, or even the whole semester. When students are engaged in meaningful long-term collaboration, the results can be impressive; they often work harder and learn more from one another than expected. In this section, we’ll cover two aspects of student collaboration in the classroom: 

Best Practices for Group Projects

For short-term group activities (a single task during one class), you can follow the principles of active learning discussed in the previous section. If, however, you want students to work in groups over a period of several days or weeks to accomplish a substantial task, it’s helpful to incorporate additional strategies. The following practices can help you make sure that group projects are effective and equitable:

  1. Ask students to create a team contract. Much like the group agreement you may have drafted at the beginning of the semester, this contract invites students to define their expectations, outline shared goals, and reflect on what a respectful and productive working relationship looks like. 
  2. Assign roles and tasks. To ensure everyone plays an active role, consider assigning each student responsibility over a specific component of the project. Alternatively, or additionally, students can rotate roles throughout the semester, giving everyone a chance to engage in different parts of the project.
  3. Pave the way for group interaction. Provide clearly defined goals, give frequent feedback, and dedicate class time for group work and meetings. Structured time for meetings helps students avoid the challenges of scheduling outside of class and ensures you can offer support while observing their work dynamic. 
  4. Clarify your assessment plan. Be explicit about how you’ll evaluate both individual and group contributions, since clear expectations reduce confusion and encourage accountability.

Sample Group Projects

Presidential Campaign Strategy Simulation

Students enrolled in a course on the history of the United States were divided into four committees, each assigned a U.S. president from a different historical period. They developed a campaign strategy for getting their candidate elected, analyzing the role of political parties and identifying the qualities that would make their candidate electable. This project highlighted how electoral systems have changed over time and how those changes shape candidate selection. 

Collaborative Creativity and Reflection

A social psychology class placed students into groups of five or six and gave them thirty minutes to compose an eight-line poem. The poems were read aloud and the class voted on their favorite by applause. Afterward, students reflected on their group’s process as well as the strategies and inspirations that contributed to the writing of their poem. They also considered whether they could have produced a stronger result individually. This activity was used to build on concepts introduced by a chapter on problem solving and creativity.

Emulating Stylistic Strategies

One literature course on the Gothic novel placed students in groups to write their own short stories using the themes, subjects, and conventions explored in class. The instructor circulated, asking probing questions and helping groups refine their ideas and how they connected to the larger themes of Gothic architectural and literary development. Two weeks later, each group presented its story to the class, situating its form, theme, and plot within the broader parameters of the Gothic mode. This type of activity enhances activity and critical thinking skills, as students created something from scratch that emulated a particular stylistic form and historical context. 

Problem-Based Learning

Many of the above principles also apply to problem-based learning (PBL), an instructional approach based on active and collaborative learning strategies. Instead of assigning students work with no context or connection to life outside the classroom, PBL invites students to engage with complex, real-world problems. Students draw upon course materials and readings, identify what they don’t yet understand, and seek out new information to fill in the gaps. 

PBL typically uses case studies with ambiguous, open-ended solutions which replicate the multifaceted challenges students will encounter in their professional or personal lives. While PBL tends to be more popular in advanced courses in which application is a primary goal, it’s also useful in introductory classes by embedding facts into real-world contexts. In addition to mastering content, students gain important skills in communication and reasoning in social situations.

If you’d like to incorporate PBL into your teaching, you can write your own case or use one of the many pre-developed and classroom-tested cases available online. A selection of these is included in the Resources section of this chapter.

Summary

Bringing in peer-to-peer learning and collaboration into your classroom space might seem daunting at first, but you’ll soon find that this is one of the many effective ways you can improve active learning in the course. When in doubt, consider leveraging student rapport in the classroom to solidify working dynamics and ensure group interactions run smoothly. Finally, project-based learning can be an especially fun and rewarding way to drive home important elements of the course content, so consider discussing this methodology with the rest of your learning team or the lead instructor. We discuss further strategies for incorporating PBL opportunities in the next section of this chapter, “Ch. 4.4 - Experiential Learning Outside the Classroom.”

Works Cited

Davies, W. M. (2009). Groupwork as a form of assessment: common problems and recommended solutions. Higher Education, 58, 563-584. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-009-9216-y