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Thriving in Academe

What is PLTL and how can I get started?

Easing students and colleagues into discovery learning with peer-led team learning means connecting student interests with course concepts.

For decades I have heard that discovery learning is a much more effective way of teaching than straight lecturing. Engineering, medical, computer science, and art departments have been using this approach very effectively for years.

Our vision for discovery learning at Brookdale Community College is to link course concepts to real-world applications of interest to students, rather than linking them to standard textbook presentations. In this approach, students actively learn through solving a series of practical problems while working in small groups. These problems, based on real-life situations, use a data-to-concept and modified case study approach to teach very sophisticated concepts in a much more concrete fashion.

Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) is our first step in this direction.

Why PLTL?
When I was introduced to PLTL I immediately recognized it as a way to demonstrate to my department the techniques and power of discovery learning—the mechanics of students working in groups, how to facilitate active learning, and the impact it has on student learning—without asking faculty to go cold turkey. That is, one day lecturing from behind a podium, the next day circulating among small student groups. PLTL’s goals go way beyond just learning facts. They are similar to the goals of project-based learning—to foster both critical thinking and problem-solving in an environment that teaches students the teamwork skills they will need in their future careers.

What is PLTL?
PLTL, a recent innovation in cooperative learning at the college level, emphasizes student achievement through active learning in a peer-led workshop. In a PLTL course, students work in small groups to solve a set of carefully developed problems.

PLTL helps students become better prepared for the modern workplace by developing communication and team problem-solving skills. PLTL originated at The City University of New York as a pilot project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). We are using it in our general chemistry classes because we feel these students need the most support.

We were formally introduced to PLTL when Vic Strozak, one of the PLTL developers, spoke to us and later ran a demo workshop for us with co-founder David Gosser. We brought our administrators and people we would depend upon for support to all of the presentations so they would have a firm grip on what PLTL was all about. This made getting support for the project much easier.

Leader training
After recruiting peer leaders (see “What You Should Expect”), we conducted leader training in two half-day sessions. Staff from our Teaching, Learning and Technologies Center planned and ran our training sessions. They could not have been better. We ran the first session during the week before the semester began. The training session duplicated what leaders do in their first PLTL workshop with students.

Following an icebreaker, the trainers worked through one of the demo workshop problems. The leaders role-played as a group of PLTL students. Then each leader led the group in solving problems from the first problem set they would use with their actual student groups. It was a perfect preparation. Leaders walked out feeling confident and knowing what to do.

We conducted the second session after the leaders had met and worked with their students for the first time. Leaders met with the trainers to answer any questions and handle any concerns. The discussion was very lively. Each question led to many others. From the discussion, leaders pointed out how useful it was to write up a journal summarizing their weekly workshop experience and how much they got from reading other leaders’ journals. After the first semester, the second training session became almost unnecessary. Experienced leaders were able to provide methods and procedures that the new leaders could follow to make their weekly PLTL workshops work. There were almost no problems or questions for us to deal with.

In the classroom
Ideally PLTL workshops should be 1 1/2 to 2 hours long, but because we don’t have recitation sessions, we had to adapt PLTL to fit our format. We run PLTL workshops once a week in place of the last hour of the weekly lecture. Having three lecture hours instead of our usual four has forced us to be more organized, and our lectures are more to the point. We leave illustrative problems for workshops.

We break the class up into random groups of six to eight students. Each group has its own peer leader. Because of the noise level, groups work in separate rooms. Students solve the problems in teams of two to eight depending upon the problem.

For weekly PLTL workshops to be effective, students must not only attend but be prepared. To help make this happen, we count workshop attendance and quiz performance fairly heavily—10 to 15 percent of a student’s final grade. Quizzes include questions similar to those in the past week’s workshops, whether covered or not, and material that will be covered in the current week’s workshop.

Working with peer leaders
Good leaders are worth their weight in gold. Since students treat them as peers, leaders can provide good feedback on students, the course, and PLTL problems sets. Additionally, leaders can help problem solve if questions arise about PLTL, develop problem sets, and give presentations on PLTL both in school and at conferences.

We meet with our leaders weekly to select and prioritize problems for workshops since there isn’t always time to complete all problems. At the weekly meetings, leaders also work out that week’s selected problems.

Journaling is one of the main ways leaders communicate with each other and with instructors. Journals include a list of problems done in workshops, attendance, difficulties that arose, and conclusions/suggestions. Leaders write their journals after each week’s workshop and e-mail them to all leaders and instructors in that course. This gives us a chance to deal with questions and problems as they arise.

Initially leaders are embarrassed to do this, but once they do it, they see how powerful it is and are eager to continue. We deal with many questions via e-mail chats; others we handle in the weekly meetings. Leaders contribute as much to problem solving as instructors.

A leap of ‘faith’
We are habitual people. We have learned a particular way of teaching, and it’s hard to break the mold. Yet many groups over many years have shown that the PLTL approach and others like it make students more self-confident while giving them a better understanding of the material. At times, it may not seem to work, but, in the end, it does.

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