Student Peer Research Articles

How to Welcome First-year Students: Best Practice of a Gamified Orientation Day

Various difficulties characterise students’ adaptation to university. It is crucial to engage first-year students from the first moment of university entrance, to support their transition from secondary to higher education, and to facilitate their learning experiences and learning outcomes. This study starts from the dual premise that orientation activities offer first-year students important transitional support to cope with the stressful challenges while enabling a sense of community, and that, as students sometimes consider orientation activities as tedious, gamification might make participation more enjoyable, while stimulating students’ motivation and information retention. Based on educational literature on gamification of learning settings, this study presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of a gamified orientation day, organised for first-year students. The design of the gamified orientation day is based on the eight gamification features of Apostol, Zaharescu and Alexe (2013): players, story, goals, rules, problem solving, feedback, safe environment, and sense of mastery. The objectives of the orientation day and its practical implementation are explained on the theoretical basis of these eight features. Qualitative survey data (N=1326) were collected to evaluate the strengths of the orientation day and the areas for further improvement. The data show that students perceive the gamified orientation day as a pleasant learning experience. Students appreciate collaborating with peer students and their active participation in knowledge acquisition. This study provides evidence-based best practices for the gamification of orientation days, and aims to inspire other universities in adapting their strategy on facilitating the transition and orientation of first-year students.

Gamification improves the quality of student peer code review

ABSTRACT Background and Context Peer code review activities provide well-documented benefits to students in programming courses. Students develop relevant skills through exposure to alternative coding solutions, producing and receiving feedback, and collaboration with peers. Despite these benefits, low student motivation has been identified as one of the challenges leading to poor engagement and substandard review quality. Objective This research investigates gamification as a technique for motivating students to generate high-quality reviews. Method We conduct a randomised controlled study, explore the nature and length of the feedback produced by students, and measure how students perceive the value of the feedback they receive and produce. We manually categorise students’ feedback into several categories adapted from a published taxonomy for student peer review. This categorisation indicates whether the feedback contains actionable advice and identifies strengths and weaknesses in the code. Findings We found that the quality of the feedback differed significantly between experimental and control conditions. Students in the experimental condition wrote longer comments and tended to produce more specific advice for their peers. Implications The findings can assist educators in understanding how the chosen game mechanics can be a potential strategy to motivate students to produce high-quality written feedback in peer code review activities.

Qualitative Oral-Presentation Feedback: Comparisons from Business Professionals, Instructors, and Student Peers

Previous studies compare quantitative feedback ratings of student peers and instructors, but new presentation-feedback technologies enable qualitative-feedback comparison. This study extends previous research by comparing qualitative feedback and business professionals’ feedback. Compared to the professionals, the instructors provided similar feedback types and sentiment; students, however, de-emphasized message delivery and made fewer suggestions for improvement. The results suggest that students may need additional practice in critiquing message delivery and in suggesting needed improvements in their peers’ oral presentations. The study also provides a methodology using the new technologies for instructors to calibrate their own and their students’ feedback with professionals’ feedback.

Smartphones in the Swedish upper-secondary classroom: A policy enactment perspective

ABSTRACT This study addresses normative orientations to smartphone use in Swedish upper-secondary classrooms. We present a Nexus Analysis from a policy enactment perspective of a material comprising ethnographic interviews, classroom video observations, and smartphone screen capture, investigating how a cultural conception of the smartphone as a source of disturbance is negotiated in discursive and embodied social action. Three groups of policy actors – head teachers, teachers, and students – balance competing agendas such as digitalization strategies, popular media narratives, and student autonomy and peer relationship maintenance. There is a tension between orientations to the smartphone as a legitimate resource for socialization and learning in the digitalized classroom, but also as an exception to desired digitalization – a potential threat to the social and disciplinary order of the classroom. Notably, the students display considerable awareness of such tensions, in reflective comments made in interviews and in displayed strategies for managing their smartphones in class.

A Study of Occupational Therapy Strategies and Psychological Regulation of Students' Internet Addiction in the Mobile Social Media Environment.

This paper provides an in-depth research analysis of occupational therapy strategies and psychological regulation of students' Internet addiction in the existing mobile social media environment. Based on the definition of Internet use peer pressure, a preliminary scale with 2 dimensions of specific behavioral pressure and psychological cognitive pressure was developed. First, a professor of mental health education and a master's degree student in mental health education were invited to rate the scale, while 47 junior high school students were selected to try the scale to ensure that the questions of the scale were clearly expressed. Secondly, 461 subjects were selected to take the initial test of the scale, and item tests and exploratory factor analysis were conducted to ensure that the structure of the scale was as expected and the scale was expressed to psychometric standards. Finally, 810 subjects were selected for the scale retest, and item analysis and validated factor analysis were conducted, and their results met the psychometric criteria. Student peer attachment significantly and positively predicted adolescent Internet addiction; Internet use peer pressure played an incomplete mediating role in the prediction of peer attachment to Internet addiction; loneliness played a moderating role in the pathway of peer attachment to Internet addiction, and loneliness also played a moderating role in the pathway of peer attachment to Internet use peer pressure. The attitude towards online games is entertainment to kill time, a tool to escape the pressure of study and to gain the fun of friends comparing with each other. The main online motivations of adolescents included individual and situational factors, and behaviors were characterized by pan-entertainment and gamification, mainly through mobile social networks to obtain external information and knowledge, maintain interpersonal relationships, and gain a sense of belonging; they were characterized by a fixation on time, space, and online content. The interaction of family members is more of a behavioral habit, and the communication habits and behavior patterns established in the family will influence the construction of children's relationships with others, while parents' head-down behavior will also influence children's attention to various needs of an Internet-dependent behavior problem, which in turn affects children's problem-solving and intimate relationships with family members.

Individual Parental Involvement versus Peer Relationships Influences on Student Academic Achievement in Biology

This paper attempts to review the impacts of single parenting, it’s factors versus peer groups and its factors on students’ academic performance in Biology, the paper research objectives such as investigating the differences in academic achievement between kids raised by co-parents and those by single parents, investigating the academic performance gaps between single-parent students who are male and female, determining how much a student's peer group affects their academic achievement, determining if children of single parents are more susceptible to peer pressure than children of co-parents. The paper reviewed several previous works from scholars on different concepts revolving around the research study including; Single Parenting, Peer Group, Concept of Academic achievements, Concept of Parenting and Academic achievements and Concept of Peer group and Academic achievement.

An Outcomes-based Evaluation of the Mindfulness for Safe Schools Program

Objectives. The objective of this evaluation was to assess the effectiveness of Mindfulness for Safe Schools, a mindfulness-based intervention adapted for sexual abuse prevention during peer-to-peer dating among Filipino public school children in Grades 7 and 8. It was hoped that through the intervention, children would be able to regulate their emotions so that they do not react impulsively to emotionally stimulating events, especially during peer dating. The study consists of four levels of evaluation: reaction, learnings, and behaviors of teachers toward the program, as well as effect of the intervention on emotion regulation and peer conformity among students.
 Methods. This study utilized a mixed methods design using a concurrent embedded method. For teachers, quantitative surveys and focused group discussions were conducted to determine their reactions to the training, their learnings, and behaviors after the program, as well as their observations of students’ responses to the intervention. Focused group discussions were analyzed through thematic analysis. Effect of the program on emotion regulation and peer conformity among students were determined mainly through a pre and post-test survey and analyzed through paired samples t-test. Video content analysis of the classroom delivery was also conducted to determine student engagement during the program.
 Results. Teachers reacted favorably to the training workshops and were able to use what they learned from the workshops to increase their patience and understanding towards themselves, their job, and their students. Students also reacted favorably to the Mindfulness for Safe Schools modules and were observed to use the skills taught in the modules to regulate their emotions. Emotion regulation improved (t=3.47, significant with p=0.00) and susceptibility to peer pressure decreased (t=8.94, significant with p=0.00) for Grade 8 students (n=950) after the modules were delivered. However, teachers reported implementation issues, such as conflicting requirements of the program with their official workload, which may have affected program effects.
 Conclusion. Our findings indicate that Mindfulness for Safe Schools was associated with improvements in emotional awareness, management of negative emotions, and showing care and respect for student peers. It also suggests that integrating mindfulness interventions in schools requires close coordination with all stakeholders: teachers, schools, and appropriate government divisions to ensure fidelity and reaching desired effects.

Patient and mentor language style matching as a predictor of working alliance, engagement with treatment as usual, and eating disorders symptoms over the course of an online guided self-help intervention for anorexia nervosa.

The aim of this study was to examine the processes involved in a guided self-help (GSH) pre-treatment intervention (RecoveryMANTRA) for patients with anorexia nervosa (AN), by measuring the levels of patient/mentor Language Style Matching (LSM). RecoveryMANTRA was supported by student mentors or peer mentors (recovered individuals) over six weekly chat-based sessions. We examined whether LSM during RecoveryMANTRA predicted patients'working alliance with the clinic therapist, motivation, eating disorder (ED) and general psychopathology. A further aim was to examine differences in LSM between student mentors and peer mentors. 87 AN adults received RecoveryMANTRA plus treatment as usual. The LSM algorithm was used to calculate verbal attunement between patient and mentor. Participants were assessed at baseline and at the end of the intervention. Both early (1st session) and late (6th session) LSM predicted higher working alliance with the clinic therapist. Moreover, late LSM predicted lower EDs symptoms at the end of the RecoveryMANTRA intervention. Patient/peer mentor dyads showed higher late verbal attunement than patient/student mentor dyads. These findings suggests that in the early phase of treatment relational aspects can impact on engagement with treatment. Verbal attunement in a GSH for AN is associated with working alliance and better clinical outcome.

Does emotional intelligence play a role in teachers' likelihood of intervening in students' indirect bullying? A preliminary study

This study examined whether emotional intelligence (EI) contributes to teachers' (N = 221) responses to vignettes portraying student peer conflicts characterizable as indirect bullying. They rated these vignettes (and others portraying direct bullying) on perceived seriousness, self-efficacy for intervening, and likelihood of intervening. EI was a positive predictor of seriousness of indirect bullying and self-efficacy, these two variables mediating the effect of EI on likelihood of intervening. However, the effect of EI was relatively small. Teachers also perceived indirect bullying as less serious than direct bullying, and felt less self-efficacious and less likely to intervene. Implications for teacher professional education are discussed.

Student trust in school peers: a relational condition for optimal school functioning

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to establish a line of inquiry into student trust in school peers by: (1) developing a valid and reliable measure and (2) investigating the potential influence of student trust in school peers on optimal school functioning.Design/methodology/approachA non-experimental, survey research design was used. Ex-post facto data were collected in the spring of 2017 and spring of 2019 from a random sample of students in either the 5th, 7th, 9th or 11th grades in 79 schools located in a southwestern city in the US. Two types of analyses were performed. First, structural and convergent validity of the items measuring student trust in school peers were tested with a confirmatory factor analysis, and correlations with bullying and safety. The second analysis tested a hypothesized model with a full structural equation model using robust maximum likelihood estimation.FindingsConfirmatory factor analysis results report that items used to measure student trust in school peers share common variance with the latent trust factor. Both the 10-item and five-item measures had good model fit and parameter estimates. Additionally, the five-item measure had strong relationships with bullying and safety. As specified in the hypothesized model, student trust in peers had a strong, positive relationship with identification with school and positive, yet not as strong, of a relationship with academic grit. These relationships existed when accounting for student perceived teacher support.Originality/valueThis study extends trust research to students' relational connections by conceptualizing student trust in school peers as a cognitive belief, constructing a valid measure and finding a relationship between student–peer trust and elements optimal school functioning.

The development, implementation, and evaluation of a medical student peer teaching training curriculum during a high-fidelity prehospital trauma simulation.

While peer teaching has been found to be an effective technique during simulation, no peer teaching training curriculum (PTTC) has been developed for simulation-based learning. The objective of this study, therefore, was to develop, implement, and evaluate a PTTC during a high-fidelity trauma simulation. When developing the PTTC, we combined several validated learning models for teaching and learning procedural skills. We then implemented it over 6 days in two phases: instructional (learning how to teach) and experiential (practicing teaching). Our research team conducted a qualitative evaluation to evaluate the effectiveness of the PTTC. We analyzed written self-reflections from 20 second-year medical students who completed the PTTC. Using an iterative inductive approach to data analysis, our research team first individually coded the reflection papers. We then met to define and categorize the codes into themes. Finally, we compared these themes to the PTTC's objectives to evaluate the curriculum's effectiveness. The following themes emerged from the data: 1) learning through teaching; 2) self-actualization as an educator; and 3) role of physician as leader, advocate, and educator. The students described how the peer teaching experience improved their own procedural knowledge and skills. They also reported an increase in their leadership and communication skills as they effectively provided guidance and feedback to their peers, which led to their self-actualization as an educator. This self-actualization inspired the peer teachers' professional identity formation as leaders and educators in medicine. Based on these themes, we found our PTTC to be an effective curricular design. Our results reinforce previously described benefits to both peer teachers and learners in regard to medical knowledge and skills acquisition and furthers the academic emergency medicine community's understanding of how students' involvement as peer teachers in simulation-based education impacts their professional development.

학생상호첨삭이 대학 글쓰기 수업에 미치는 영향 연구

Peer correction between students is a useful teaching method for students who cannot accept the affixation of professors or who do not submit assignments at all due to their strong arguments. This is because it is possible for students who have not submitted their assignments to receive assignments from other students, read and correct them according to the writing evaluation criteria table. Therefore peer correction in the class provides students who have significantly poor writing skills with the opportunity to participate in the class and can be helped with their writing through the experience of reading and evaluating other students’ assignments. Student peer correction of self-introduction statements conducted by the author during the second semester of 2019 and the second semester of 2020 consisted of learner-centered writing class, so that the learner’s class participation and concentration were also improved. Therefore, Student peer correction in university writing education has had a very positive effect.

Exploring Student Engagement With Computer-Mediated Peer Feedback on L2 Writing

From a sociocultural perspective, this case study explored two intermediate-level Chinese university EFL students’ multi-dimensional engagement with asynchronous computer-mediated mode of peer feedback. Data sources included student drafts, peer feedback, think-aloud protocols, stimulated recall, and semi-structured interviews. The two students displayed different responses to asynchronous computer-mediated peer feedback with different foci when engaging with it affectively, cognitively, and behaviorally. In particular, their cognitive engagement was characterized by noticing and interpretation, evaluation, and decision-making. The two student writers’ engagement was not just related to the computer-mediated mode of peer feedback, but also to their motives and roles adopted in the activity of engaging with peer feedback, both of which may be influenced by the community (i.e., the classroom instructional context), its rule (i.e., word limit), and the division of labour in the community (i.e., the role adopted by student reviewer). Pedagogical implications are discussed.

The importance of parents' attention to complete aggressive behavior

Aggressive behavior is an act that causes other people to experience suffering, which results in physical and psychological suffering. Aggression is caused by a lack of parental attention and high peer conformity. This study aims to analyze (1) student aggressiveness, parental attention and peer conformity, (2) the contribution of parental attention and peer conformity individually with quantitative methods of descriptive correlational research to see the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable. The population of this study were students of class VII, VIII, and IX of SMP Negeri 21 Padang who were registered in the odd semester of the 2021/2022 academic year as many as 374 students. The research sample was 193 students, the research sample was taken using purposive sampling technique. The findings of this study explained that parental attention and peer conformity contributed 42.1% to aggressive behavior. That is, parental attention and peer conformity are factors that contribute to reducing and reducing student aggressive behavior at SMP Negeri 21 Padang. This means that parental attention, peer conformity and aggressive behavior are greatly reduced. Meanwhile, in some aspects that are still in the moderate category in each research variable, it is necessary to improve through guidance and counseling services. The research data shows that the higher the attention of parents and the conformity of peers, the lower the aggressive behavior of students. The data of this study indicate that parental attention and peer conformity are higher. These data indicate the lower the aggressive behavior of students. In connection with the results of this study the authors can provide suggestions: 1) students can take advantage of guidance and counseling services to form positive behavior. 2) Guidance and Counseling Schools cooperate with school personnel, parents and students in preventing and reducing aggressive behavior and the principal as a leader must be able to assist guidance and counseling teachers in establishing good cooperation with parents and other school parties, so as to prevent and reduce aggressive behavior

LGBTQIA+ International Students and Socioemotional Well-Being

International students are more likely to experience mental health issues and increased stress. Mental health is often surrounded by negative societal stigmas that act as barriers to seeking support and tend to lead to greater mental health concerns. International students tend to seek socioemotional support from other international student peers rather than seeking out counseling services. However, this study shows that LGBTQIA+ international students were less likely to seek socioemotional support from other international student peers due to fear of their sexual orientation being discovered and their families finding out about their identity. This study examines how LGBTQIA+ international students talk about their experiences on and off campus in relations to their socioemotional well-being. Specifically, this study sought to better understand the complexities of LGBTQIA+ students’ identities, and the challenges they faced in terms of their socioemotional well-being. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

Online instruction for a humanized learning experience: Techniques used by college instructors

The online learning literature converges to suggest that a “humanized” learning experience is critical to student engagement, where student agency, instructor presence, and peer presence have been nominated across a number of studies as key elements of a humanized online learning experience. Despite theoretical support, description of specific implementation techniques used by instructors to enhance these elements is limited. Based on an extensive review of the literature, this study developed a coding scheme of humanization practices and conducted content analysis of 244 excerpts of teaching practices from 17 online courses that demonstrated high levels of humanized instruction out of 100 randomly selected online courses at a large community college. The results reveal eight techniques that instructors used to humanize their online courses. These techniques indicate that to offer students a humanized learning experience, it is critical for instructors to make consistent and regular efforts throughout the course, promote social and academic presence in an integrated way, and proactively guide student social-emotional communication. These techniques, along with the concrete examples, lay a groundwork for future research about the relationship between humanization techniques and student outcomes in virtual environments and provide actionable guidance on how to humanize an online course.

Visualizing protein data sets in R through a student peer-review rubric.

The R programming language and computing environment is a powerful and common platform used by life science researchers and educators for the analysis of big data. One of the benefits of using R in this context is its ability to visualize the results. Using R to generate visualizations has gained in popularity due to the increased number of R packages available to convert data to graphic display. In this paper, I ask the following question: how can student engagement with protein analysis be promoted using R-based visualizations in the classroom? During the 2021 IUBMB/ASBMD workshop "Teaching Science with Big Data", I presented a teaching strategy that used R for the visualization of protein data. In this report, I provide a teaching procedure and a summary of how students engaged with these data in our Introduction to R for Professional Data Science class. This report is based on a case study methodology by reviewing student peer comments for protein analyses conducted in R. The results indicated that students were active participants in the peer-review process and that they learned to take a critical view of data visualization.

Student Teachers’ Video-Assisted Collaborative Reflections of Socio-Emotional Experiences During Teaching Practicum

This study explores video as a tool for student teachers in reflecting upon their own teaching practice. The particular interest is in exploring, what kind of socio-emotional experiences did the student teachers describe during the video-assisted collaborative reflection and what benefits student teachers experienced through the video-assisted collaborative reflections? The study implements a video-observation model (Participatory and Empowering Video Analysis- model, PEVA™) developed for a professional teacher education programme and investigates the model from student teachers’ perspective. The participants are student teachers in an international professional teacher education programme (n = 24) at a university of applied sciences. Student teachers video recorded their own teaching sessions displaying their work in different roles: teacher-led content specific instructions, group working sessions and individual student guidance and tutoring sessions. Student teachers were advised to annotate their own videos with a video-reflection tool by focussing on socio-emotional interactions, non-verbal elements of interaction and moments, where students felt successful and empowered. In addition to self-reflection, videos were viewed and annotated by a peer student and a teacher educator. After the phases of reviews and annotations (self-,peer-, and teacher annotations), an hour-long collaborative reflective feedback discussion was held either face-to-face or online. These sessions were facilitated by the teacher educator, involving the videoed student and the reviewing peer. Video annotation data was transcribed, and, in addition, the student teachers’ reflective writings (54 pages) and teacher educators’ notes of the reflective feedback sessions (20 pages) were used as data. The results of this study indicate that student teachers viewed the video reflection process as helpful in making socio-emotional experiences visible and tangible. The video annotation tool was recognised as useful for indicating socio-emotional experiences and making them more concrete thus resources for reflection. A combination of own, peer’s and teachers’ annotations functioned as a collaborative tool for increasing awareness of different socio-emotional experiences. By observing videos of their own teaching as well as teaching videos of their peers, student teachers were able to evaluate teaching situations holistically and observe connections of their own socio-emotional behaviours to their students.

Traveller students being and relating to an/‘other’: identity, belonging, and inter-ethnic peer relationships in a highly diverse post-primary school

ABSTRACT Irish Travellers have long endured racism in Ireland. In education, they have experienced significantly lower participation and academic achievement rates relative to the settled community. This paper draws on a study examining how an intercultural approach to education was implemented in one urban DEIS post-primary school with a highly diverse student population. Informed by Critical Race Theory, an in-depth qualitative case study design was implemented. Data collection involved twenty-eight semi-structured interviews with staff, Traveller students, ‘other’ minority ethnic students, and White settled Irish students. Data analysis involved several coding stages, and the development of categories. This paper examines one category focusing on issues of identity, belonging, and relationships amongst minority ethnic groups in the school, with a particular focus on the Traveller participants. Participants’ constructions of ‘normality’ are considered with regard to how people ‘look’ and behave as well as their perceptions of student peer relationships and the lack of engagement between student groups. The findings are interrogated in the context of Critical Race, feminist, and class theories, and the prevailing discourse about educational disadvantage. The recommendations for policy, practice, and future research provided emphasise the need for critical engagement with and sensitive implementation of intercultural education in post-primary schools.

Enablers and obstacles in teaching and learning of mathematics

This paper presents results of a systematic review of papers published at the LUMAT journal on the current issues positively and negatively affecting teaching and learning in mathematics, in concurrence with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The analysis also offers insight into the most studied topics in mathematics education research, including key demographic and methodological characteristics such as year of publication, participants, education level, research methodologies, and research focus. Data was gathered from the studies published in the LUMAT: International Journal on Math, Science and Technology Education, starting from its first volume in 2013. So far, 225 articles were published in this journal, with 133 studies written in English and 51 studies related to mathematics. Although earlier studies support the notion that mathematics education is mostly traditional, this review suggests current research has thorough and positive outcomes, such that mathematics educators are likely to implement non-traditional approaches, encouraging student engagement, peer collaboration, and mathematical discourse. Certainly, in such learning environments, students tend to feel more motivated and less anxious about learning mathematics. They may also be more active and responsible in their learning, collaborate with peers, and get into mathematical discussions. Yet, there are also a number of difficulties and obstacles highlighted both in teaching and learning of mathematics. The findings might inspire several instructional implications for mathematics educators, curriculum developers, and researchers. Recommendations are given to add into what the existing literature claims and offer greater empirical evidence to support the verdicts.