Blogging from The Tenth Southern Hemisphere Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics
Anita Campbell – UCT (photo taken from http://uct.academia.edu/AnitaCampbell)
Live blogging: Note that these are notes I’ve taken live, but will edit this today into a more readable format. I want to put this up straight away though to see if I have any obvious misunderstanding. Equations will also be put into more readable format ASAP.
How would you define peer learning?
Poll answers (as asked in the talk):
- Learning through sharing ideas and experience with others with similar levels of expertise
- Students interactions on a problem and thus learning together (not teaching each other but exploring together)
- Letting students combine their knowledge and understanding by teaching each other and problem solving together
- Students learning with each other and from each other
- Exchange of information/critique of peer’s work
Students learning from each other without immediate intervention by a teacher (Boud, Cohen and Simpson 1999(
A bidirectional learning activity that benefits both parties (Keppell et al).
Constructivist theories: Knowledge+experience combine together in learning to lead to a conceptual framework (Piaget)
Schema are networks which develop under this integration of knowledge and experience
(somewhat counter to behaviourism)
The implications of this are that you have to start by knowing what students know. What’s the baseline. Transition from school to university are based on this.
Activate existing schema before presenting new information
Externalise memory (list, concepts maps) so recall is not the focus.
Mistakes can promote learning by causing cognitive conflict: A discomfort can be important.
Sociocultural theories: Lev Vygotsky: Learning is socially mediated
Zone of proximal development: Space between what one already knows and where they have the potential to get to.
Implications: Create classroom exercises which require social, verbal interaction.
The irony of peer learning is that it requires a teacher to make it effective (Boud et al.)
Communities and landscapes of practice.
The class is not the primary learning event. It is life itself that is the main learning event. Schools, classrooms and training sessions still have a role to play in the vision, but they have to be in the service of the learning that happens in the world (Wenger, 2006)
This is rather difficulty in pure maths, as this particular real life is the abstract: a rather fuzzy ground.
A landscape of practice is a collection of communities of practice: First year students interacting with engineers, for instance – overlaps and exchange.
How do these theories contribute to better teaching and learning in first year maths?
Hypothesis: Students work better when learning with others.
Link between theory and the real world.
Word Cloud generated by those in the talk:
At UCT, Kenny’s whiteboard workshops for first-year students were really well supported and worked really well. They let students work on a set of problems collaboratively by writing their working on a whiteboard, using a marker. Knowledgeable tutors milled around and offered help when needed.
In second-year, there was far less peer learning support. Paul Gedes set up a support group for students to discuss maths together, but there was no knowledgeable tutor to guide the students when they were confused. Paul put the emphasis on students learning together, but I didn’t find it helpful when we were stuck on a problem that we could not figure out.
I will speak to those in charge of second year at MAM and see what can be done about student support at this level.
That would be fantastic. It is unfortunate that there is no hotseat for second-year students, but perhaps that is because there is less demand for one. Perhaps a survey would ascertain the level of demand.
One reason why there is no Hotseat for second-year (or third-year) students is that the Maths and Applied Maths Dept. cannot afford to extend the Hotseat (funding has decreased in the last few years). Another reason is that second-year and third-year students are expected to have found out how to manage their own learning. A suggestion which might be cost-effective would be to have a whiteboard room for all levels. Second-year or higher students could help first years who are going astray.