“It’s Much More Than Just Teaching:” The Experience of Undergraduate Peer Educators
Abstract
In four year colleges, advanced undergraduate students commonly provide academic support services. While the benefits of peer education for recipients are well established, the benefits for providers are not well known. We conducted two focus groups with peer educators (PE). A prominent theme was the appreciation of the perceived stigma and embarrassment experienced by fellow students seeking academic assistance. This recognition led PEs to conclude that in addition to addressing academic content, their role included increasing students’ sense of competence and self-confidence. Other benefits included the development of metacognitive skills, improved communication abilities, personal satisfaction and meaning from helping others. Service learning has become an increasingly common requirement in both secondary and post-secondary education. An early definition of service learning (Sigmon, 1979) emphasized that benefits occurred both to the service providers as well as the service recipients: “…an experiential education approach premised on “reciprocal learning” … {true] service learning occurs only when both the providers and the recipients of the activities benefit from the activities” (Furco, 1996; p. 2). Among undergraduate university students, service learning has been associated with higher grade point average, improved critical thinking, mastery of academic content, and enhanced writing skills (Batchelder & Root,1994; Jameson, Clayton, & Bringle., 2008; Vogelgesang and Astin, 2000). Other less scholastically oriented benefits have included an increased sense of responsibility, greater self-efficacy and better developed interpersonal problem solving skills (Weiler, Haddock, Zimmerman, et al, 2013). A type of service learning that has not been well studied is that provided by peer educators (PE). Newton and Ender (2010) define peer educators as “…students who have been selected, trained, and designated by a campus authority to offer educational services to their peers” (p. 6). Peer educators generally serve in the role of tutor or mentor to less advanced students. They may be placed in charge of subject matter review sessions, tutorials, and as critical readers of written assignments or serve as assistants in first year experience courses.