Learning Science from Peers
Taking the fear factor out of General Chemistry
Professor and Chemistry Department Chair Mark Cracolice is used to doling out homework, but in the last few years he’s given himself a serious assignment: to restore the good name of General Chemistry. “First year chemistry is pretty famous across the country as being difficult for a lot of students,” says Cracolice. Tackled in fear by many, General Chemistry is a year-long course composed of both lab time and lectures that wasn’t producing the results Cracolice was hoping for: good grades and an interest in—not fear of—chemistry.
To that end Cracolice received a grant in 1997 from the National Science Foundation to create a mentorship program that would partner General Chemistry students with an older, more experienced student who would guide them through the course. The result was the Peer Led Team Learning Program, in which peer leaders attend the class lectures and then run a two-hour workshop each week to help students work through concepts and suggest study techniques. “The emphasis is not on being an instructor or content experts, but to act as a friend who took the class before who can give helpful hints and keep everyone on task,” explains Cracolice.
Peer Leaders are recruited from the class itself and are selected because of their success in understanding and managing General Chemistry—which means having a B or better at the end of the year. Those students who choose to join the program go through an extensive pre-semester training program that covers in-depth how they can be good leaders and how to mentor kids into being better students. That training is supplemented with additional workshops each week to continuously keep the leaders—who earn only college credit for their roles—on top of the game.
The results? Cracolice was instantly impressed: “What happened was students started doing better, and grades went up. The average student saw improvement.” Much of that success can be attributed to the peer leaders, who have found the experience transformational both in and out of the classroom. Joe Haworth, a 22-year-old chemistry major, has been a peer leader for four semesters and sees benefits reflected in his own academic path. “I am now confident to discuss problems with both my peers and my professors. The process of discussion is essential in the sciences, and the confidence to just do it is often the hardest thing to come by. The program has built my confidence and has also taught me how to approach discussions.”
Stephanie Schultz, a senior medical technician major who worked as a peer leader and is now the program’s coordinator, found the interactive format of the program so useful that she employs it outside of chemistry. “I think this program helps students work together, and when you work together it’s easier to handle the class,” says Schultz. “I also use this model in my other classes, where I create mini-workshops with kids in the class so we can figure out concepts and go over problems together. It’s really been helpful.”
Beyond the remarkable benefits in their own lives, Schultz adds that watching struggling students smoothly grasp concepts thanks to the weekly workshops is the true benefit. “Watching students succeed and knowing that I was a part of that success is an awesome feeling.”
