Peer to peer: benefits of P2P in science

by David Bradley

If you find your Professor intimidating and don't want to lose face asking seemingly naive questions about a course or your research, who can you turn to? A peer mentor might be the answer. Peer-mentoring schemes have been around since ancient times, they even get a mention in Greek texts, but today they are becoming increasingly popular in academic environments as educators begin to recognise the benefits for their students of learning with a little help from their friends.

Such a scheme could readily be initiated at the common-or-garden freshmen social or orientation events. During this process, which may take some time, you can always look to resources outside of the university to find a tutor so you don't fall behind.

Sharing resources

So what is peer mentoring and what's in it for you? The system usually involves coupling older students with their younger peers to make, as one recent graduate, Joe Branch, describes it a 'Big Brother/Big Sister' program. The system provides the, often younger, student with a better insight into their course and how to get the most out of their time. Conversely, the peer mentors themselves learn invaluable skills in handling people.

There are numerous universities now running peer-mentoring schemes in the US and, increasingly, in Europe and the UK. They often come in different guises with various names - peer-assisted learning and paired learning are popular alternative names although some advocates would argue they are not quite synonyms. 'In Peer Assisted Learning, there is a deliberate intent to help another person or persons with their own learning goals,' explains Keith Topping, an educational psychologist at the University of Dundee in Scotland. 'Within this over-arching principle, PAL includes a number of different methods: peer tutoring, peer mentoring, peer modeling, peer education, peer counseling, peer monitoring, and peer assessment,' he adds. The International Mentoring Association hosted by Western Michigan University provides a good starting point for finding out more details and background on the various flavors.

Under obligation

If your faculty is already running a scheme then it is not such a big step to get involved. Indeed, you might be obliged to hook up with a peer mentor as part of your course structure. Faculty administrators will usually pair up a mentor and a younger student with common backgrounds in research, career interests, regional and ethnic backgrounds, and sometimes gender. One of the most straightforward and functional peer mentor systems might not even rely on sharing a course or research group. According to Janice Baker of London Guildhall University, 'We run a buddy scheme for English-speaking students to help students using English as a second language to upgrade their written work,' she says.

But, where peer mentoring comes into its own is in helping students develop their own skill-set and in getting to grips with their course and research. Fellow students are, after all, uniquely qualified to empathise and inspire. While that intimidating Professor in a white coat with the stereotypical wacky hair may not be entirely approachable for the most trivial of problems, a student colleague just a year or two further on might offer a friendlier face and help their 'junior' colleague find their own solutions.

'It is a safe place to air understandings and misunderstandings - it is where students realise that everyone else is having the same problem with understanding that they are,' explains Maureen Donelan of University College London, which runs peer mentoring in the maths, physics and biochemistry departments. This is a task that no tutor can do - tutors are often so far removed from the memory of the problems of student days that they can no longer empathise in the way that fellow students who have just been through the process can. 'The students are often the ones who initiate peer mentoring because they find the faculty tending to give old and/or misleading information,' adds Branch, 'they were often looking out for themselves. How often would a person in aerospace engineering or history tell you the job market is tight?' he questions.

Graduate approval

Emma Coe helped set-up the peer-mentoring project in science at Manchester University in England: 'Most of our postgraduate peer mentoring is conducted by graduate students for graduate students,' she explains, 'the basic idea of peer mentoring is straightforward - experienced graduate students are assigned small groups of those less experienced.' She adds that the mentees can turn to their mentor with all kinds of queries to find out how to get hold of particular bits of information, for help, for advice and basically for general support and encouragement. The mentors on their part act more as guides than teachers. Indeed some peer-mentoring schemes are set-up so that 'teaching' as such is as disallowed as it ultimately benefits neither party.

The whole system, whether formal or ad hoc, is a double-edged sword. Both mentor and mentee can gain a lot from a peer-mentoring program. 'Mentors experience leading a group, learn facilitation techniques, teamwork, empathy and communication skills as well as valuable revision,' explains Donelan. 'Employers,' she adds, 'are very interested in these schemes, because students provide evidence of transferable skills obtained in an innovative way.' It is often more difficult to encourage freshmen to join in because they often perceive the system as remedial, which it is not.

Careering ahead

Peer mentoring can also help the younger students define their career goals although there is generally no explicit component of the various systems for this aspect of personal development. 'Through talking as a group and having mentors share experiences of their own goals and next steps,' explains Coe, 'students might discover some of the choices open to them.' Career guidance, per se, usually comes under a separate umbrella but just talking to other graduate students and mentors can be a helpful way of sounding out ideas and hearing of useful opportunities or finding out about networks.

Traditional tutoring systems often fail because of staff shortages. A peer-mentoring program can even help solve such problems by integrating new students into a university and the way of life. The mentors benefit from the added responsibility and the opportunity to put something back into the system without simply adding to the workloads of overburdened tutors and administrators. 'The advantages of this are huge,' enthuses Donelan, 'students are a university's most under-used resource, and have an immense amount to give, and when given the responsibility they rise to the challenge.'

Often there is some kind of remuneration or course credit for mentors taking part in these schemes. Topping says that in some schemes mentors can simply be interested volunteers, or have the inducement of course or other credit for tutoring. In the US, he points out, it is more usual that senior student mentors would receive some payment. 'But,' he warns, 'if you pay, you might not get the best-motivated helpers.'

A department hoping to run a peer-mentoring scheme should offer workshops within the program to assist both mentors and their 'charges'. Mentors can learn about their role and what a mentee might expect, how to communicate effectively and how to maintain the relationship. In the peer-mentoring Workshop Model at CUNY, students who have done well in their classes become guides and mentors to small groups of between six and eight fellow students. This is at the undergraduate level and peer mentors here are actually within the same year group. The peer-led groups meet weekly and work on carefully structured problems. The supportive environment provided by this arrangement helps each student build his or her understanding of science.

There are several key components of the CUNY system that are equally applicable to a mentoring scheme anywhere: the workshops become a regular course component, the faculty teaching the course are heavily involved, from the sidelines, and peer mentors undergo training and are closely supervised. With particular attention being paid to mentor knowledge and teaching and learning techniques everyone benefits.

If your department or faculty does not have a peer mentoring scheme in place there might just be a chance to be proactive. The easiest and most obvious tack is to approach your student society and see whether it might be possible to implement an informal 'buddying' scheme for new research students, for instance. Such a scheme could readily be initiated at the common-or-garden freshmen social or orientation events.

Alternative to tradition

Traditional mentors do not always provide the best learning 'assistants' for young research students. 'I would never knock the personal tutoring system,' emphasises Donelan, 'which I think is also vital, but which plays a different role - that of loco parentis, whereas the fellow student is a role model.' Structured peer mentoring at the graduate student level is relatively new but is breaking with tradition and comments from postgrads underscore how valuable it can be. 'I met people I wouldn't normally come into contact with and also had someone to turn to for advice,' said one Manchester University scientist. Others mention 'encouragement, 'reassurance that it is common not to get many results in the first year,' 'gaining advice on seminar presentations,' and 'introductions to people in the department,' as important to their experience of peer mentoring.

Rather than finding yourself the junior partner in a long-term 'tutor-student' relationship your supervisor or department may set you up with a peer mentor, if such as scheme does not yet exist at your institution it might be worth bring the idea to the attention of the Prof...or asking an older student to do that for you.

You could soon be mentored by a friend.
This article originally appeared in BioMedNet's HMSBeagle in my regular Adapt or Die column.