The Reciprocal Learning Strategy in LAMS

Reciprocal learning is an instructional model in which students work in pairs or groups to master the lesson content. Students cooperate in well-defined roles of tutor and tutee to maximise their own and each other’s learning.

Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels

Reciprocal learning also improves meta-cognition which is the process of reflecting on the building of knowledge as each student takes turn to do and also explain how it’s done.

Through this strategy, students explain their learning to other students and essentially take turns being the teacher with the teacher acting as a facilitator to assist the student-teacher in clarifying their ideas and activities. This process forces students to put their ideas into words, which aids organisation and retention.

This strategy works best when used for practice or application of an already studied or reviewed subject.

Practice or application exercises that work best with this strategy are those which have one right answer.

Jennifer Gonzalez (yes, I’m a big fan! 😃) from Cult of Pedagogy explains this strategy -fantastically, if I might add, in just 4 minute in this video:

Reciprocal Learning

How to do Online Reciprocal Learning in LAMS

For this strategy we will use a Maths lesson on solving differential equations.

This is the learning design:

Reciprocal learning: learning design

As you can see there are 2 groupings in this learning design.

1. The players A and players B groups.
   The reason that we do this is so we can give Players A their own Player A sheet and the same for Players B.
2. The second grouping is where you will allocate one Player A and one Player B (in pairs).

Outline of Activities:

1. Introduction to the activity [Noticeboard]
   A simple introduction to the tasks ahead.
2. Group players A and B
3. Branch each player so she/he can receive their respective sheet.
4. Each Player according to their respective letter (A or B), will be sent to a branch where he/she gets the equation to resolve as well as the coaching instructions to assist the other player.
5. Group students in pairs (one Player A and one Player B)
6. Zoom meeting.
   Assuming that you are running this synchronously online, use Zoom to put each pair in a breakout room so they can take turns being the tutor and the tutee (see below if you want to run this asynchronously or use another synchronous tool).
7. Q&A, here’s where both students get to submit their respective answer.
   After each student in the group submits their answer, both can see their responses and rate each other’s answer.
8. Self and Peer Review
   Each student in the group is able to self-assess their own performance in solving the differential equation as well as to assess their colleague in their coaching support -providing feedback for future improvements.

Preview this learning design as a student lesson:

Begin lesson

For a step by step run of the learning design or to download it and adapt it to your own teaching, take a look at this card:

Differential Equations - Reciprocal Learning

Blended alternative

If you are in a classroom, you can remove the Zoom activity and just get the students to use the Q&A to submit their answer.

Asynchronous alternative

If you are running this asynchronously, replace Zoom with a Forum instead creating one topic discussion for each Player.