Pratibha Varma-Nelson
ProfessorDepartment of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Founding Executive Director of SEIRI
ude[dot]iupui[at]nvp
Development, Evaluation and Dissemination of Peer-Led Team Learning and cyber Peer-Led Team Learnng
My group is engaged in translating lessons learned from educational research into practice to benefit STEM students in undergraduate and graduate courses. We have developed and evaluated the following three pedagogies over the years that are used at IUPUI as well as nationally and internationally: 1. Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) 2. Cyber Peer-Led Team Learning (cPLTL) PLTL is a complement to the lecture and an alternative to the traditional recitation section commonly used in lower-division science, mathematics, and engineering courses. The PLTL model eliminates the traditional recitation section from the course, replacing it with a meeting of a team of students who collaborate to develop their problem-solving skills and conceptual understanding by working on faculty-developed exercises. This team features an undergraduate leader who is strategically trained for his or her role and has previously done well as a student in the course. Overview of pLTL can be found here: https://cpltl.iupui.edu/doc/What%20is%20PLTL.pdf cPLTL was developed at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis using web conferencing software by a team of chemistry faculty, instructional technologists and faculty in the school of Education. cPLTL workshops have the potential to further increase student participation in science disciplines by allowing participation in PLTL workshops, online, from anywhere and at any time. (https://cpltl.iupui.edu). I expect cPLTL to evolve continuously as technology evolves. Recently as courses moved online abruptly due to COVID-19 outbreak faculty implementing with PLTL were able to offer cPLTL very quickly and provide peer learning even when everyone had to learn remotely. Over the years we have received funding for our work from the National Science Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and IUPUI.