Ryan Chapman (274651101) & Rachel Justice (27588185) (With support from Erkan Demirbas)
- Executive Summary:
The peer support project for ECO1032 Business Environment (Micro) is a student-led, student-focused initiative designed to improve the learning experience for students and ensure that those who may not have completed level 3 qualifications in subjects such as mathematics and economics are not unfairly disadvantaged when it comes to completing their business degrees. We hope to foster a positive working environment where students can feel comfortable in working together and enhancing understanding of key subjects such as break-even analysis and supply and demand within a market; for themselves and others. As our support group consists of volunteer students, our seminar tutor Erkan arranged meeting on our behalf with the MASH team, to guide us in how we should support our peers effectively. We have chosen to take part in this project because it contributes to the ‘one community’ spirit at the University of Lincoln as well as giving us the opportunity to gain new skills and learn from our tutor.
- Introduction:
We were first introduced to this project in semester A of the 2023-24 year by our seminar tutor Erkan Demirbas, who has in recent years encouraged students to take part in similar initiatives especially in these modules as students find both the contents and assessment format challenging. As the modules include two Time Constraint Assessments-TCAs focusing on specific formulas and analysis of data, we found our peers were not confident with certain formulas, especially under timed conditions leading to stress that they would underperform in the module. After we highlighted these problems raised by our peers, we set up support sessions available to everyone on the course, whether they were struggling or just wanted extra practise. With the aim of improving/ strengthening our peers understanding and confidence with the module, with the outcome of improving accuracy so that their performance during the TCA assessments would improve allowing them to achieve higher grades.
- Personal Backgrounds:
We are both first year undergraduate students, studying Business (Ryan) and International Business Management (Rachel) at LIBS. Having had experience supporting classes in younger years and working collaboratively with friends to enhance our own abilities during previous education, we understood the value of supporting those who may need it. We found that learning from peers can be beneficial as it creates a friendly and supportive environment, as well as helping us to further our own knowledge. We also personally enjoy taking part in this project and look forward to the future of it, as it is great experience for future careers and can be used to build confidence and other soft skills that many employers are looking for; especially with such a competitive labour market as seen in recent years, both in the UK and globally.
- Project Objectives:
- Enhance Student Performance
- Sharing of knowledge through small groups in organised sessions outside of timetabled lectures and seminars.
- Strengthening understanding for those leading the sessions.
- Aiming at an overall increased attainment for assignments in these mathematical modules.
- Promote Collaboration across different students within the business school e.g. PhD students supporting first year students.
- Increase Student Engagement, both in timetabled sessions and during personal study.
- Contribute to the ‘One Community’ spirit at the University of Lincoln – One of the key factors which sets our university apart and convinces prospective students to enrol.
- Implementation Strategies:
- Peer Mentoring Sessions
- Questions solved on whiteboards in front of small groups.
- Individual queries answered on a case-by-case basis.
- Online Tutoring Sessions
- Run as a way of including a wider number of students in our scheme.
- Involved questions being solved over Microsoft Teams, with the opportunity for students to work alongside the tutor and solve the problems.
- Feedback Collection
- Feedback forms at end of sessions.
- Allows for changes to be made for future events and to help guide the mentors.
- Departmental Involvement
- Classroom bookings and infrastructure provisions: whiteboards and computer systems.
- Pizzas supplied for students and mentors – Encouragement to attend and reward for mentors’ support.
- Gift Card Incentives for mentors – Used as a way of showing appreciation to those who helped with the sessions.
- Certifications – Signed by Head of Department, MASH Team, and Erkan; shows involvement in such an important project and can be included on a CV.
- Email Support
- Keeping an open and clear method of communication for those who need it.
- Non-judgmental support where students can feel safe to ask questions.
- Can be less daunting than reaching out to a lecturer.
- Lecturers may have less time to provide support on a 1-to-1 basis.
- Ability to point students in direction of other sources of help.
- MASH Team on campus.
- Online education platforms, ie. Mathcentre.
- MASH team training for volunteer students so that they can be more prepared for the Peer Support sessions.
- Equality & Diversity Considerations
- Mentor team comprising of Male and Female students from all levels of education.
- Support available for any student of any ability.
- Wider Implementation:
We would love to see other modules and departments adopting similar measures to help students, as we believe this can set our university apart from others and make a genuine impact to both the confidence and performance of those giving and receiving assistance. 2 key modules that we have studied which we believe can benefit from this form of support are Principles of Marketing and Finance for non-specialists, as there are many intricate theories and common mistakes which can occur on these. The first year Principles of Marketing in particular involved creating a portfolio as an assignment – a task which proved challenging, and we personally believe we could have performed better in, given the right guidance. We would have been happy to provide sessions on skills such as video production, voiceover recording, and graphical presentation; all skills which are highly valuable in the modern workplace.
- Short-term
When we first volunteered to help Erkan run the support sessions for ECO1032 alongside two other students, our aim was to primarily prepare our peers (from our seminar groups) for the upcoming TCA assignments. Therefore, our support sessions consisted of working through trial test questions and KAHOOT quizzes to recap the content expected to appear on the assignment. We also offered pizza to students as an initiative to increase the number of attendees.
We also attended a MASH training session to better understand the roles that we were taking on in the Peer Support Group and prepare us for the support sessions. During the MASH training we went through multiple scenarios which may appear in the sessions, and we learnt how to correctly approach a student who is struggling without being insensitive. For example, we shouldn’t assume a student should know how to do something and how to approach a student who might not be as confident asking for help. This training session was very insightful and allowed us to be more inclusive in how we approached our Peer Support Sessions as we understood that not everyone would be at the same academic ability so it would be important to ensure that we explained content so that all abilities could understand.
- Medium-term plan
After the success of the peer support group for ECO1032, Erkan encouraged us to continue our support sessions for EC01031 in term B. As Erkan is the module leader for EC01031, we were able to advertise our support sessions to the whole cohort through announcements made by Erkan in lectures and emails.
Due to the increasing demand of students wanting to attend these support sessions we were able to also expand our team of volunteer students, including first year, third year, master, and PhD students (pictured below). This allowed us to further contribute to the ‘One Community’ spirit of the University as we were able to connect students from across the Business School with the common aim of helping others improve their academic performance.
For this module we offered three formal support sessions, one for each of the TCA assignments and a third for the group project assignment. The group project assignment offered a unique experience for us as the format of this assessment is very different to the TCAs – Application of data was more important than the calculations themselves, but the calculations also need to be correct to provide sufficient information and accurate results to comment on. It is crucial that we can help sufficiently, as we don’t want students to feel that they cannot contribute enough to their final reports. We also changed the format of our sessions to accommodate for the large number of attendees, we did this by separating our peers into smaller groups which could be supported by two volunteer students.
We also continued the initiative of offering students pizzas as our feedback from the ECO1032 support sessions highlighted this as a contributor to their attendance at the sessions (Figure 1).
- Long-term plan:
Looking into the future, we would like to establish a framework that can be expanded to assist more students in the years to come. Not only in modules which are mathematically challenging but in all modules which students need more practise/support.
Future plans will involve maintaining a strong sense of community: enticing students to attend and increasing incentives for helpers too. We feel we have developed skills which can be passed on to students joining in September and those new to the business school. Other module leaders may notice groups or individuals are struggling with specific skills and feel that schemes similar to ours can be implemented for their own courses. It is important to pursue collective growth, so we hope schemes like this can become a selling point of our university.
Long-term success may involve greater promotion, such as:
- Fliers around university
- Scheduled Drop-ins
- Greater use of Microsoft Teams and other Online Platforms
- Results:
To ensure students were benefiting from these support sessions, we used primary data collected through feedback forms at the end of each support session. This allowed us to see which aspects of the sessions we could alter to support our peers further.
Figure 1: Qualitative feedback from Test 1 ECO1032 support session
| ID | I am very happy with the organization | How effective was the members of the support team? | Do you plan to engage in further events in this area? | I appreciate the support I received today from the senior student. | Attending this event helped me prepare for Test 1. | I feel more confident now. | ||||
| 1 | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | ||||
| 2 | agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | ||||
| 3 | agree | agree | agree | Strongly agree | agree | agree | ||||
| 4 | agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | agree | agree | agree | ||||
| 5 | agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | agree | agree | agree | ||||
| 6 | agree | Strongly agree | Neutral | Strongly agree | agree | agree | ||||
| 7 | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | ||||
| Having pizza is a great idea | Attending this event helped me expand my network | Did the event meet your expectations? Why? Why not? | How do you think the event could have been improved? | How would you rate your overall satisfaction? | ||||||
| Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Yes | N/A | 5 | ||||||
| Neutral | agree | Everyone was very helpful, Brodi spent specific time breaking down certain questions and Ryan was constantly offering help | Pizza | 5 | ||||||
| agree | Strongly agree | It was useful and informative. | Teaching-led part. | 4 | ||||||
| agree | agree | Was no pizza 🙁 | Pizza | 4 | ||||||
| agree | Neutral | It met my expectations | By splitting the session into guided revision and then have the other half as independent revision where we can ask for help from the people leading the session | 5 | ||||||
| agree | 4 | |||||||||
| agree | agree | yes was helpful | pizza | 5 | ||||||
From the data collected from Test 1 we were able to identify that our peers were we happy with the support session we had delivered and as a result they felt more confident with the content before sitting Test 1. Therefore, we successfully met our objective of preparing our peers for the first test, which this support session was based around. We also discovered that students preferred a more student/teacher led style of learning, which took on board for our next support session.
Figure 2: Qualitative data from test 2 ECO1032 support session
| ID | I am very happy with Kahoot night | Volunteer students were well prepared | I feel more confident now. | Did the event meet your expectations? Why? Why not? | |||
| 1 | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Yes because it was helpful | |||
| 2 | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | yes as we learnt and had the results explained | |||
| 3 | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | It was very helpful, relaxed and enjoyable. A fun event. | |||
| 4 | agree | agree | agree | Yea | |||
| 5 | Strongly agree | Yes | |||||
| 6 | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | yes, there was a variety of different questions to answer | |||
| 7 | agree | Neutral | agree | yes, it was enjoyable | |||
| 8 | agree | Strongly agree | agree | yes it did | |||
| 9 | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | N/A | |||
| 10 | Strongly agree | agree | agree | yes | |||
| 11 | Strongly agree | Strongly agree | agree | Yes | |||
| 12 | Strongly agree | agree | Neutral | ||||
| Would like to say anything to Ryan, Brodi, Rachel, and James? | In which other modules would you prefer to have Peer Support Sessions? | How would you rate your overall satisfaction? | |||||
| Well done 🙂 | Not sure | 4 | |||||
| were very nice and helpfull | all of them | 5 | |||||
| Thank you very much for your help! | All modules. | 5 | |||||
| They all explained the reasons to the questions well | All of them | 4 | |||||
| Thank you. | I prefer to have the support for economics rather than the other modules. | 5 | |||||
| thank you james!!!!! | principles of marketing | 5 | |||||
| they were amazing | OB | 5 | |||||
| they did very well | all of the | 4 | |||||
| Very friendly and easy to understand. Helped significantly | All modules | 5 | |||||
| Excellent input | All of them | 5 | |||||
The feedback collected from the second peer group highlighted that students were very satisfied with the support that they received, however they would benefit further from Peer Support Sessions for their other modules as well – such as finance. This supports our long-term plan of establishing a framework to growth the Peer Support Sessions further.
As well as using primary data from our ECO1032 module, Erkan also provided us with data that he had collected from peer support groups he had organised over the last two academic years in Data Analytics modules.
Figure 3: Quantitative data about the peer support group
| Academic Year | Total | ||||
| 2023-2024 | 2022-2023 | 2021-2022 | |||
| Module | ECO1031 Data Analytics | ECO1032 Business Environment (Micro) | ECO1023 Data Analytics | ECO1023M Data Analytics | |
| Number of volunteer students | 12 | 4 | 10 | 4 | 30 |
| Number of large group sessions | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 8 |
| Number of attendees | 60 | 35 | 80 | 57 | 232 |
| Number of small group sessions | 1 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 9 |
| Overall satisfaction rate (average) | 4 | 4.6 | 4.2 | 4.4 | 4.3 |
This data shows that more students are becoming more engaged with the support sessions by either attending or volunteering, this directly contributes to the universities ‘One Community’ spirit as more students are willing to give up their time to support their peers.
Not only do the support session benefit those who attend, but also those who volunteer. One volunteer student in their final year of studies said “Thank you for the opportunity to volunteer in the peer study group. The main benefits I found from these sessions was improving my leadership and communication skills – leading sessions with strangers helped improve my confidence when speaking to new people and teaching them the principles of microeconomics allowed me to improve the methods I use to explain new concepts to people. The sessions allowed me to meet lots of new people in addition to helping deepen relationships with some students I already knew. These sessions have made me feel a sense of community in the business school as I was able to give advice, I wish I had received as a first-year student, I feel as if there are not enough inter-year activities within the business school, so this was particularly refreshing. This will help my employability as I have another example of evidenced interpersonal and leadership skills.” This further supports our argument that our Peer Support Group improves student engagement and understanding in the modules.
- Challenges Faced:
- Maintaining Engagement – We need to ensure that sessions remain informative, to keep students engaged with the work that they are doing and returning to future support if they feel they can benefit from it. We will use a range of delivery techniques to strengthen this aspect of the project.
- Ensuring Inclusivity – Offering equal opportunities to those who attend and scheduling sessions that can reach as many as possible, to help boost grades as an entire cohort.
- Scalability – Looking forward in to working on a wider range of skills and helping more students in years to come.
- Confidence of Mentors – Being able to talk in front of a group and feel confident in their ability to pass on knowledge. We hope to work on this with additional MASH sessions from those who work in similar ways as their professions.
- Conclusion:
From the data we have collected we can conclude that as a result of our Peer Support group students felt more supported in their studies, which helped to improve their understanding and confidence in ECO1032. We also found that students would prefer to have more support across all their modules. This report has shown that our Peer Support Group significantly contributes to the university of Lincoln’s ‘One Community’ Spirit by bringing together students from across the business school to help support first year students in their modules. Although we have faced challenges with maintaining engagement as not all students are willing to attend out-of-hours sessions, we have been able to adapt to offer more group sessions on request for students who were unable to attend the planned sessions. The findings from this report also support our long-term plan of establishing a support framework for more students across the University.
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