<p>That’s a really important question. The short answer is no. No, peer learning is not critical- if critical means that UCLA can’t function without it.
But by the same logic nor are office hours or discussion sections.
Here’s a quick response: </p>
<p>What about TA and instructor office hours? </p>
<p>Yes, there are TA and instructor office hours. But office hours at UCLA in the introductory sciences are overutilized, especially pre-exams. It is not uncommon to walk down to Young Hall in 4th week and see 25 students spilling out of a faculty office intended to seat five, with students sitting in the hallway unable to ask questions.
Also, office hours and any drop in services are a different model. Office hours answer immediate questions, like how do I solve this problem for the homework due on Tuesday. Professors don’t prepare any material for office hours. Peer learning sessions have required weekly attendance (if you sign up) with prepared material, and as a result teach good study habits, like how to keep up with the material from week to week.</p>
<p>Does peer learning work? Why?</p>
<p>Peer learning works. AAP, a sister program to Covel at UCLA for underrepresented minority students only, found that their students had a full grade point improvement in the specific classes from participating in peer learning sessions (eg, going from a C to a B). It’s not a perfect comparison because AAP helps a different student population, but their model is the same- students helping students.
(AAP can check the grades and make statistics because they provide a whole host of other services including counseling, kind of like Honors; Covel cannot). There’s a lot of published studies on peer learning’s efficacy too, mostly from the 70’s and 80’s, but I find UCLA-specific statistics to be even more compelling.
But more than that, peer tutors offer a different point of view from TAs or professors. They remember what it’s like to not understand the material, they can explain it from that point of view, and they themselves learn from tutoring the material. And frankly, student tutors care about student learning- a lot of TAs do, but many of them don’t.</p>
<p>But it’s a budget crisis- why should UCLA pay for peer learning?</p>
<p>Our entire program in four science and math subjects and drop-in writing costs 185,000$ annually. That sounds like a lot, but compare it to a few figures. The UCLA administrator who made this decision makes 245,883$ annually. UCLA spent 22,000$ on a single recruitment event- Scholar’s Day- in 2008. And we just got 300 million in donations, most of which is not earmarked for any particular purpose beyond “student learning”. </p>
<p>Covel has little administrative overhead because it shares costs, tutors, and facilities with student-athlete tutoring (which comes from a separate funding source, Athletics). </p>
<p>Also, Dean Judi Smith even agreed herself in a meeting with us (the concerned students) that establishing two new centers will cost more overall due to administrative overhead than Covel currently costs. The key difference is that it will cost the individual departments money, not the College of Letters and Sciences.</p>
<p>Also, consider the cost of not having Covel. At UCLA, a lot of classes are offered in series and are only offered once. Eg. you might take Chem 30A in fall, Chem 30B in winter, and Chem 30C in spring. Let’s say Covel helps you pass Chem 30A. If you didn’t take Covel, and you failed Chem 30A in fall, you can’t continue in the series. But you might not be able to retake Chem 30A the next quarter either- fewer classes are offered, and sometimes no classes are offered off that original schedule. The problem persists into the next year- when you go to enroll in Chem 30C in fall of the next year, you can’t- it’s not offered. But you might need those classes to enroll in other classes as prereqs, etc.
The net result is failing one intro class could result in a student needing an extra year or more of school- that costs UCLA much, much more money as a cumulative effect than Covel costs. Plus, what about the student?
A lot of students enter UCLA unprepared in the fall quarter, and quickly adapt to the learning system here. But that one quarter is so disproportionately important- failing that one quarter could put you behind by a whole year.
There’s also an argument to be made for the quality or standard of learning, but that doesn’t really convince administrators as much as the bottom line.</p>