Small class teaching - peer learning approach

Description:

A major problem in our classes is, that they are very diverse and the differences in background often lead in classes that repeat lots of background information and consequently are moving very slow for some, while for others they are still challenging. A very beneficial thing is, however, that these classes are very small, with 3-8 students, therefore the homogenisation of their backgrounds could easily be achieved prior to classes. As their backgrounds are usually from animal or biology/plant sciences, and their are lots of links between these topics, this would be an excellent task for peer-learning. Therefore, the students will be provided with relevant peer review papers from both plant and animal sciences, which are relevant to understand the interactions between these systems (plants as feed for animals). They will gather in groups and discuss these papers and help each other understanding them. They will then prepare a joint presentation on the papers with one person (who is randomly selected at the day of presenting) presenting it. That way, they shall ensure that everyone has understood everything. The students that will not present will then be part of a discussion with me as a lecturer about the papers, so that everyone will have to say something.