How Does My Student Benefit by Teaching the Class With a Group of Fellow Students?

Letting students teach in groups is an effective teaching tool.

Students who act in teams to teach their peers must work together to learn and figure out how to best present information. This forces them to cooperate, come up with a presentation strategy and ensure that all aspects of the topic are covered. It's a much more active and memorable way to learn than by passively receiving delivered wisdom, and the process can greatly improve students' social and communication skills

Comprehension

When students become the teacher, they tend to understand and retain the information they learn because they not only have to master intellectual concepts but explain them to others. This is especially true if the teacher doesn't give the students all of the material to be covered, but requires them to search for and present relevant information they have found. As a result, the students become more immersed in the learning process because they're "actively engaged in the production... and not only in the consumption of knowledge," an article in the winter 2003 Journal of Information Systems Education explains.

Collaboration

Teaching in teams requires the team members to collaborate and agree on a particular approach to presenting the topic to fellow students. They depend on each other to teach their peers effectively. Often, one member must take the lead to make sure all of the elements of the topic to be discussed are covered, ensure effective communication and resolve conflicts. The process requires strategy, planning and leadership-building skills, cooperative learning specialist Barbara Millis explains on the nonprofit educational TLT Group website.

Peer Support

Student teams that contain a mix of high and low academic achievers benefits both. "The weaker students gain from seeing how better students study and approach problems, and the strong students gain a deeper understanding of the subject by teaching it to others," Millis notes.

Presentation Skills

Students in English as a second language classes reported that teaching other students showed them the need to project their voices and use body language to help them express their thoughts. They picked up gestures and other behavioral cues they saw their teachers use in class, Japanese education researchers reported in The Internet TESL Journal in 1997. They found this particularly helpful in engaging the class, while struggling to express thoughts in the language they hadn't fully mastered.

Student Interaction

Working in teams to teach each other improves communication and social skills and student relationships. Students who have different ethnic and cultural backgrounds "bring diverse opinions, experiences, and learning styles to aid in problem solving," Millis adds.

Teacher Appreciation

Learning how much preparation goes into lesson planning, preparation and delivery shows students the large amount of time and effort teachers devote to their classes. The experience also shows them what types of presentation skills they can learn from teachers and how much disruptive or inattentive student behavior hinders the teaching process.

References

• Journal of Information Systems Education: Systematic Personal Training by Letting Students Teach Each Other
• The TLT Group: Managing---and Motivating---Distance Learning Group Activities
• The Internet TESL Journal: Let Your Students Teach Their Class