“This is inter-learner interaction, between one learner and other learners, alone or in group settings, with or without the real-time presence of an instructor. “
Moore, M. (1989)
Key Ingredients
- Developing peer relationships increases student engagement and learning (Trowler, 2010)
- Students are experienced and knowledgeable
- Students can be contributors to the course itself
- Students can be collaborators, learning with and from peers,
- Social activities which focus on self-expression increase student agency.
- Cognitive activities which focus on academic and professional goals engage students as a community.
- Peer learning has many forms and mediums, not just group work or discussions.
Taste Test
Discussions
- Students as moderators, e.g. assign discussions forum each module, helping others stay on topic and track.
- Chain reaction (Dingwall, 2018)
- Pass the Baton (Crosslin, 2020)
- Create “offline” activities and have the students “debrief” in “class”
- Create a simple weekly challenge to encourage creative thinking. For example, have learners share one related resource to the module topic, and share why it matters to them, and what value it brings to the course.
More on discussions can be found at Facilitating Engaging Discussions
Group Work
- Group work and presentations work in distributed and online environments too.
- Create scenarios for learners to interact in. Establish and assign roles for learners within those scenarios.
- Host a formal debate
Collaboration & Feedback
- No one writes alone, consider how peer feedback might work for any project in your course.
- Course wiki projects involve assigning individual learners to work on specific areas, creating a cohesive project. (e.g. Fedwiki; The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft – project)
- Have learners present a proposed project or research topic to the class to solicit feedback.
- Have learners create and facilitate course related scenarios.