Learning Together

Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) is a student-centered educational intervention based on the social constructivism theoretical framework in which students, under the guidance of undergraduate peer facilitators, collaboratively solve problems in small groups. Cyber Peer-Led Team Learning (cPLTL) workshops are a synchronous online adaptation of PLTL. In this parallel convergent mixed methods study, student and peer leader discourse during PLTL and cPLTL workshops was triangulated with student survey data, field observations, and interview data to discern the experiences of PLTL and cPLTL organic chemistry students and evaluate students’ dialogue in both settings for evidence of knowledge co-construction, based on the Interaction Analysis Model. Although both PLTL and cPLTL students’ discourse shows evidence of the early phases of the Interaction Analysis Model, the PLTL students were significantly more likely to engage in the later stages of social construction of knowledge. Aspects of community, such as peer leader mentoring, peer-to-peer encouragement, shared heuristics, and relational discourse, were comparable in the two settings, but the peer leaders facilitated differently, depending on the setting. Implications for faculty are suggested, including: student training about behavior expectations; workshop problem design; and peer leader training to foster effective group collaboration. Furthermore, this work can be extrapolated to other collaborative learning environments, whether face-to-face, hybrid, or online.