Formative assessment practices situated within Peer Assisted Study Groups

Rationale
First level Science students are faced with a bewildering array of courses at university, many of them with densely structured, modular, and multi-streamed curricula. While such curricula are designed to give students the advantage of studying a large number of topics in separate modules within the one course structure, they also have the potential to alienate rather than engage students. Any lack of coherence between teaching, learning and assessment may be exacerbated if there is non-alignment between learning objectives and student learning.

To address these issues, Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) was introduced in 1994 and is currently in the developed curricula of eight first level courses. PASS is therefore a mainstream service: it is pro-actively situated within large, high-risk, first year courses. The rationale of the PASS learning model is that it allows leaders to align student learning activities with progressive assessment, by providing the scaffold within which leaders can design student-directed instructional tasks that target course learning objectives, for any instructional mode of teaching.

PASS pedagogy
The structure of PASS pedagogy is founded on organized hour-long, weekly, voluntarily attended study sessions for small groups of first year students. Student learning is facilitated by two, course competent second or third year undergraduate student leaders who design learning activities for their students which are structured as formative assessment tasks.

PASS leaders play a pivotal role in the success of the program. They are responsible for creating the discussion-centred learning environment for their students; one that is structured to meet their diverse learning abilities, needs and styles. Students are thus able to admit ignorance and misconceptions, and seek information, advice and remediation, without fear of jeopardizing their academic outcome. By sharing similar career interests with their students, leaders are also able to communicate their own appreciation for the discipline and therefore act as role models, or mentors. As a result, students gain confidence in their ability to instigate their own learning processes and, as they develop higher learning skills and engage more deeply with the discipline, progress from dependent to independent learners. In two documented courses where PASS was introduced, student failure and attrition rates decreased, and an increased recruitment of students to related second level courses was also noted in the following year.

Mechanism of PASS
Within first level Biology, Chemistry and Statistics courses offered each semester, the average number of PASS students participating for all courses each week is approximately 3 000. Collectively, this scenario comprises 150 PASS groups per week, each with 15 to 30 students.

Leaders can apply for positions within the program during the previous semester, provided that they have achieved a grade of 6 or 7 for their relevant PASS course and have a clearly demonstrated enthusiasm for the discipline, even though they may be enrolled in diverse degree programs. PASS is generally regarded by attending students (65-75% of enrolled course numbers) as a rewarding experience, chiefly in terms of perceived academic benefits but also concerning the socially interactive learning environment. All PASS groups are supervised and monitored to ensure that each session has group-focused activities in which students are actively involved in collaboratively based learning exercises.

Effectiveness of initiative