Abstract:

Peer tutoring is an innovative concept in the teaching-learning process. Under this strategy, some students act as “tutors”, teaching to their partners (“pupils”) a part of the subject. The activity has the support of the professor, who leads and administers the process, correcting possible misconceptions. It is neither a passive, individualistic or a competitive learning concept as the traditional mechanism. It is a cooperative approach that aims to involve students in all aspects of their learning process, as well as to develop didactical and communicative skills, teamwork habits, solidarity among partners and delve into the content of the subject.

This paper displays several experiences about the implementation of peer tutoring in the Laboratory of Classical Analytical Chemistry. The subject is taught in the second year of the Chemistry degree. it consists of the determination of several inorganic metallic cations following the classical qualitative inorganic analysis that takes place in four sessions. The practicals are developed by pairs, and all the students perform simultaneously the same experiments at the same time. At the beginning of the session, a pair of students assume the role of "tutor" and explain the fundamental of the practical, the tasks to-be-performed (underlining the main experimental practical steps to be taken into account), the material to be used, the expected observations, the waste management issues, and the possible issues and the way to avoid and solve them. The entire process was supervised by the professor, which corrected mistakes and misunderstandings.

Finally, the students were requested to give their opinion about the project. We found the students positively appraised this approach. Overall, they felt more involved in the learning-teaching process. Moreover, they have the chance to act as a teacher stimulating a better understanding of the practical, and as “pupils” they found themselves freer to ask doubt to other students, rather than to the professor. The negative point was that it represented an additional effort, enlarged the practical session, and more time to prepare the performance of the laboratory subject by themselves.

Keywords:

Chemistry, In-pairs, Learning, Students, Teaching, University.