Evaluating the Effectiveness of Peer-Led Learning for a Hardware Course

In this paper, we describe the effectiveness of peer-led learning for a hardware course (computer organization) in the Computer Science and Engineering department at a large public university. The proposed peer-led learning in the format of online recitations extends in-class activities to after-lecture recitation hours, encourages students' deep learning and understanding with extra challenging questions and peer-guided group discussions. In this paper we will describe the format, design, and improvement of the peer-led recitation sessions and how we choose peer leaders. The implementation of the peer-led online recitation sessions began in Fall 2021. Since then, students' feedback has been monitored continuously to adjust recitations' formats, frequency, discussion topics, etc. Surveys have been conducted and analyzed to evaluate the effectiveness of peer-led recitations and identify areas of improvement. Most students (more than 90%) expressed positive feedback in the end of semester survey. Based on the survey results conducted in the past several semesters, we conclude that peer-led online recitations help students' study in concepts understanding, problem solving techniques, and assembly language programming. Moreover, we observe that course pass rate improved for students attending peer-led recitations.