Peer Teaching: A Pedagogic Method for Higher Education

Abstract

Teaching the concepts of numerical courses is a significant challenge for engineering and the management students with innovative teaching pedagogy. Engineering and management education requires pedagogies that provide conceptual framework and that develop analytical and decision making skills to prepare students to face the complex problems. Class room dynamics add values to learning among students. Activities chosen by the professor can be central to many progressive learning experiences. Therefore, we experimented peer teaching methodology for post graduate management students (MBA) for teaching supply chain management concepts and application through a simulation game called “Beer game”. The Beer Game players’ experiences typical supply chain coordination problems, wherever information sharing and collaboration is missing. As a part of the peer group learning initiative, the senior batch students were encouraged to play the game with their juniors. Game demonstrates that communication gap and lack of collaboration can leads to an effect called “the bull whip effect” in the supply chain due to varying inventory levels at each link in the supply chain. Additionally, it was also intended for the students to develop their critical thinking, complex problem solving, leadership, negotiation, collaboration and communication skills in the process. Study results demonstrated a statistical significance in learning outcome, participant satisfaction. Learners results have shown a greater and high learning levels for the peer teachers. This peer teaching approach can be recommended to incorporated in teaching pedagogy for engineering and management students as one of the active learning method.