Reciprocal Peer Tutoring: Re-examining the value of a co-operative learning technique to college students and instructors

To examine co-operative learning between pairs of college students in the field of education, the reciprocal peer tutoring (RPT) procedure was used in two experiments with 97 graduates (Experiment 1) and 100 undergraduates (Experiment 2). Contrary to initial studies using a different population of college students, results in both experiments indicated that RPT failed to improve students' understandings of course material compared to an individualised study task. In addition, RPT neither increased students' feelings of self-efficacy nor did it decrease students' levels of test anxiety relative to the control condition. However, participants overwhelmingly reported RPT to be helpful for studying the course content. Results suggest careful consideration of ecological validity in research and expected gains in practice.