Abstract:

Managing the diversity of students in a way that supports their academic performance is a huge challenge, which is magnified in large compulsory first year courses as failure rates tend to be high. One way to bridge the distance among new students in a university is to develop the habit of peer learning among them. Peer Learning is a pedagogical technique that is characterized by the attainment of knowledge and skill by peers who are at a similar level of proficiency (matched companions) (Topping, 2005). It is defined as the formation of “small, structured and heterogeneous groups” to cover the content (Singh & Abrham, 2015). It is supposed to be a mutually beneficial experience.

This study explores the effects of peer learning on student performance of first year undergraduate students enrolled in a business degree at a private university. It is a quasi-experimental post-test only design with a control and experimental group involving 200 participants. The control group was taught in the conventional manner of lecturing by a professor whereas the experimental group was taught by a combination of lecturing, and the assignment of small tasks/topics that the students had to cover themselves in groups and teach the rest of the classmates. At the end of the study, a post test will be conducted and data analysis will be performed to investigate the significance of the difference in means of the control and experimental group. Based on the literature review, it is expected that peer learning will have a remarkably favorable effect on student performance.

References:
[1] Singh, A., & Abrham, T. (2015). Effect of peer-learning method on the development of students ’ skill performance, 2(2), 284–287.
[2] Topping, K. J. (2005). Trends in Peer Learning, 25(6), 631–645. http://doi.org/10.1080/01443410500345172

Keywords:

Peer learning, student performance, business education, undergraduate, higher education, diversity.