Abstract:

An important component of institutionalizing a Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) program is conducting ongoing evaluation and research to determine and subsequently disseminate the program’s impact. This programmatic aspect can be challenging for faculty and staff to incorporate with the daily operational needs of the program. This challenge can be addressed by expanding the role of Peer Leader (PL) to include evaluation and research. At Florida International University (Miami, Florida, USA), Research Assistant PLs (RAPLs) are selected from a pool of interested experienced PLs. The applicants are interviewed in groups, with a focus on discussing their understanding of PLTL research articles, their interests, their potential for educational research, and their ability to interpret data. Once selected, RAPLs attend weekly training meetings tailored to develop their understanding of scholarly educational literature and to shift their perspective to comprehend literature less as a student and more as a researcher. The training curriculum continues over the course of the semester in a modular format transitioning into methodologies in education research. The curriculum encompasses qualitative, mixed methods, and quantitative methodologies of conducting educational research. Throughout their experience in the training workshops, RAPLs develop and implement their own research projects. The research projects build on past projects, which have included metacognition, critical thinking, and the PL experience. A current research project on scientific literacy is using findings from those projects to build an understanding of an observed gap. The importance of this RAPL model is that it lays the groundwork for training undergraduate PLs to develop skills in scholarly research, provides a service to the department and institution in developing continued program evaluation, and pilots a method of involving Peer Leaders at other campuses in disseminating the research findings through presentations and papers, as well as disseminating the RAPL research and training model.

Keywords:

PLTL, Peer Leader, Research Training, Undergraduate Educational Research.