Peer Learning and the Group

From the very first day of the course, it was clear that there was some effort to help us gel as a group being put in my the courses coordinators. We spent 3 days going through an induction process. During which we spent time doing group exercises and getting to know each other. I left those 3 days knowing quite a lot about the members of the groups I had been in. it meant when i went into the first classes I knew faces and names and felt comfortable chatting away with people. Over time I got to know the majority of the class pretty well. We spent a lot of time chatting with each other, in person and over whatsapp. Not just about the course, about our lives, about our jobs, our families etc. Getting to know the other participants of this course has been one of the greatest joys I have had during it. I have made friends on this course that I have no doubt will be there for life.

The idea for an induction in this manner was one I had never really thought about. On previous courses, ‘induction’ consisted of a short tour of the campus and usually sitting down while someone explains the course to you. It is nothing like what I experienced on this course. It was three days of a get to know you session. Nothing much about the course was discussed besides our expectations for it. A lot of the activities were about team building and getting to know one another. It was nice to have that space. I have started new courses two times before this. It took me until nearly Christmas to make friends in my undergraduate degree. I was scared. There were 700 people in some of my lectures, I was never beside the same person twice and I was very shy and completely overwhelmed by UCD and its size and the amount of people in it. It took one lecturer, towards the end of November, to tell us to start chatting to the person on our right. I never really spoke to the person I met in that lecture, but she introduced me to the person who would become my best friend through my college years and we formed our own little group of friends overtime. It wasn’t quite that bad when i went to do my Postgrad, I was a lot more confident as a person and didn’t mind just randomly chatting to people as much. However, we were immediately thrown into a very intense course and it left little room for getting to know people. The three days of a induction were invaluable for me. Not only did it mean I wasn’t walking into a room full of strangers in those first classes, but it meant I was walking into a room of friendly faces. People whose names I knew and was already comfortable having conversations with. This is something I’d love to implement in my teaching practice. It set us up as a support system for each other and created a great space for peer learning that may not have existed otherwise. I think every group should have some form of proper induction, where the content of the course isn’t the priority but building relationships is.

I learnt a lot from the group during this course. We were almost constantly in contact and we were able to help each other with problems. We would often sit and discuss how we were doing in placement. Some people had very difficult situations in their placements and we were not only able to give advice, but able to learn from their situations. For example, if one person had a particularly difficult time with a learner, they could reach out to the class for help and advice. We all benefited from the times when people reached out because we learnt how to deal with difficult situations before we ever encountered them. This kind of support and advice also happened during assignments. We all helped each other with information and resources to try and relieve the stress on individuals somewhat. Having this support system to lean on throughout this difficult and intense course has been important and I’m very grateful for them.

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