During this time of remote teaching and learning, group work and peer learning are more important than ever for enabling students to feel a sense of belonging to the learning communities on their courses. This page outlines ideas and links to resources for how you can develop these dimensions of your students’ learning online – please do get in touch with colleagues in the CLT via the ‘Group-Remote Teaching’ Microsoft Teams site to talk specifically about your course’s and students’ needs.
Benefits of Group work and Online Peer Learning
Embedding some form of online peer learning and group work, either within the curriculum, or encouraging students to ‘meet’ outside of formal course delivery has many benefits:
- It helps students to expand their sources of support and feel a sense of belonging to their course community
- It provides opportunities for rich learning experiences through shared approaches to learning, study techniques and student life
- It helps students consider themselves and their peers as valuable members of the learning environment – developing autonomy rather than relying solely on the teacher
- Working in diverse groups can develop students’ awareness of multiple perspectives and experiences of students from different cultural and education backgrounds
- It facilitates students’ reflective skills and builds problem-solving strategies
- It can help to overcome social isolation at a time that demands much self-motivation and independent study
