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About Academic Peer Mentoring

Academic Peer Mentoring are regular, weekly scheduled sessions that review, reinforce and provide practice with course content. Sessions are a proactive way to approach, understand and master class material. Students who invest their time in weekly sessions are noted to perform better in class and in overall grades.

History
The Academic Peer Mentoring (APM) program draws on tenants from programs such as Supplemental Instruction (SI, University of Missouri-Kansas City) and Peer Assisted Learning (PALS, University of Minnesota) that have shown extraordinary success. These programs have influenced APM through processes for conducting study review sessions and collaborative-cooperative learning groups.

The APM program was piloted in Fall 2017 for students enrolled in historically difficult college courses. APM does not focus on high-risk students, but with difficult lower-division undergraduate courses. These courses share common characteristics: rigorous curriculum, extensive readings, high standards and often serve as gatekeepers before entering into an academic program.

Program Overview
the program consists of regularly scheduled out-of-class session(s) that are facilitated by other undergraduate student(s) who have had the class, earned a high grade and are knowledgeable about the subject matter. The sessions are offered weekly throughout the academic term, beginning with the first or second week of class. Academic Peer Mentors prepare for their sessions using content provided by the faculty member. These sessions are free and open to any student enrolled in the participating course. APM attracts students of varying academic abilities.

Key Elements of Academic Peer Mentoring
APM sessions integrate what to learn with how to learn it. Students who attend the sessions:

• Review, reinforce and provide practice with course content.
• Model and help develop analytical skills needed for the course.
• Encourage asking and understand higher order questions.
• Give an opportunity to practice the intellectual skills demanded by course content.
• Helps monitor comprehension and mastery of the material.

Why You Should Attend
Students who regularly invest their time in these weekly sessions perform better in class. Data indicates a half to full letter grade better when attending regularly. If multiple sessions are offered for your professor’s course, utilize as many of the sessions being run. Sometimes it is useful to hear different people explain the same information. This encourages deeper understanding.