Peer-led Team Learning (PLTL)

 Active Learning in STEM Webinar

 

Title: A Little Help from My Friends: Peer Led Team Learning Before and After COVID-19

Speaker: Eric J. Voss, Ph.D., SIU-Edwardsville

 

Abstract: Peer-led Team Learning (PLTL) is a model of active learning that introduces peer-led workshops as an integral part of undergraduate STEM courses.  Students who have done well in the course are recruited and trained to become peer-leaders.  The peer-leaders meet with small groups of six to ten students each week for one hour to discuss, debate, and engage in problem solving related to the course material.  PLTL originated in a General Chemistry course at the City College of New York in the 1990s.  Early evidence of improved student attitudes and performance led to further study and development of PLTL by a national team, which resulted in more widespread adoption of PLTL in a variety of science, mathematics, and engineering courses.  Very early on, several SIUE chemistry faculty members attended PLTL training sessions sponsored by the National Science Foundation and subsequently implemented PLTL workshops into the SIUE on-sequence General Chemistry courses.  Since then, implementation has expanded into all first-year chemistry courses and several biology courses.  Due to COVID 19, PLTL workshops have transitioned from face-to-face to online synchronous sessions, with new challenges and opportunities.  Student performance data, student attitudes, peer-leader training methods, workshop material development, scheduling, space allocation, institutionalization, and sustainability of PLTL will be discussed in this webinar.