Same-year paired peer tutoring with first year undergraduates

All 45 students in a year-long undergraduate calculus class were involved in a paired peer tutoring experiment. The 12 one-hour peer tutoring sessions substituted for traditional lectures. Degree examination results in calculus for the experimental group were significantly better than for the previous year, especially for students who were not maths majors, but the year cohorts were non-equivalent in some respects. Specific structured subjective feedback from the students indicated that peer tutoring had improved their transferable skills in a number of areas. It was concluded that peer tutoring added value to teaching and learning in higher education.