Coupling Video with Peer-To-Peer Learning
By Dan Fauchier
Second in a series. In our first installment we offered some statistics our own research has yielded: “Primarily, how do YOU, yourself, learn new, better ways of doing your work?”
- 57% of you said, “From others, my peers”
- 29% responded “Videos online”
- 7% each for “Podcasts” and “Company Training”.
If you missed that discussion, you can find it HERE.
But is our research unique and limited to the built environment (design and construction) world? No.
Small teams – Widespread Benefits
As far back as 2008, Barron and Hammond, writing for the George Lucas Educational Foundation, reported that studies “show the widespread benefits of cooperative learning, in which small teams of students use a variety of activities to more deeply understand a subject. Each member is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping his or her teammates learn, so the group become a supportive learning environment.” That’s peer-to-peer learning.
Peer-to-Peer Learning
And from the Harvard Business Review article we cited last week, Palmer and Blake found “peer-to-peer learning is also uniquely well suited to the way we learn. People gain new skills best in any situation that includes all four stages of what we call the ‘Learning Loop’: gain knowledge; practice by applying that knowledge; get feedback; and reflect on what has been learned. Peer-to-peer learning encompasses all of these.”
Moreover, “peer-to-peer learning creates a space where the learner can feel safe taking these risks without a sense that their boss is evaluating their performance while they are learning. You’re more likely to have candid conversations about areas you need to develop with a peer than with someone who has power over your career and income. In peer-to-peer learning, the dynamics of hierarchy disappear.”
And further: “A secondary benefit of peer-to-peer learning is that the format itself helps employees develop management and leadership skills.”
Peer-to-Peer Learning with Videos
In “How the Workforce Learns”, a Degreed study of 512 people equally divided between men and women and across generations, researcher Todd Tauber found, “Nearly 70% learn from peers or by reading articles and blogs every week, and 53% learn from videos in any given week.”
In a 2016 study, “Effective Educational Videos: Principles and Guidelines for Maximizing Student Learning from Video Content”, CJ Brame reported, Several meta-analyses have shown that technology can enhance learning (e.g., Means et al., 2010; Schmid et al., 2014), and multiple studies have shown that video, specifically, can be a highly effective educational tool (e.g., Allen and Smith, 2012; Kay, 2012; Lloyd and Robertson, 2012; Rackaway, 2012; Hsin and Cigas, 2013; Stockwell et al., 2015).
Video Action Teams combine both
Barron & Hammond also pointed out, “A growing body of research demonstrates that students learn more deeply if they have engaged in activities that require applying classroom-gathered knowledge to real-world problems. Like the old adage states, ‘Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand.’”
That’s why my colleagues and I created a learning management system using short videos, accompanied by Action Items and a “Video Action Team Guide” that facilitates small peer-to-peer groups of 6 to 8 in weekly or monthly 45-minute discussions based on watching 15 minutes of video. It is described in more detail here: https://constructionaccelerator.com/video-action-teams
Find the Barron & Hammond report here: https://www.edutopia.org/inquiry-project-learning-research
Find the Harvard Business Review report here: https://hbr.org/2018/11/how-to-help-your-employees-learn-from-each-other
Find the Degreed study here: https://get.degreed.com/hubfs/Degreed_How_the_Workforce_Learns_in_2016.pdf
Find the Brame study here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5132380/