Lockdown and Peer Tutoring
Working alone can be difficult in general, but the situation worsened with the arrival of the COVID-19. People had and may still have to work from home, which can lead to a lack of motivation and productivity. It was challenging to remain focused during lockdown and work every day to finish my assignments and dissertation. An unexpected video conference with a friend of mine to discuss a particularly difficult text we had to study became a life-changing experience. It was exciting as it helped us develop our ideas and discuss the difficult points so that, in the end, we both had a better understanding of the text.
We decided to repeat the experience, and it became a routine: we met every day at a given hour and worked on similar or different projects. Once the semester was over, we still had to do our research and write our dissertations, and we decided to continue until our respective work is over. These meetings were a way to stay motivated and to help each other, and they allowed us to speak about our ideas, to share and broaden our views. Through our discussions, we were able to deepen our thinking and develop new ideas about many issues; when one of us faced a problem, we generally managed to solve that problem by discussing it. Soly Mathew Biju –professor at the University of Wollongong in Dubai– explains that “[p]eer tutoring has emerged as one of the most effective mechanisms of enabling learning and improving the academic performance of students at all levels of education.”[1]
I have gained a lot of experience through peer tutoring. It allowed me to increase my writing, analytical, and editing skills, but it also benefitted my efficiency and motivation. Nevertheless, one of the inconveniences is that we would sometimes lose our focus and go off-topic; and at certain times, the prolonged exposure to computer screens made it hard to stay focused on an assignment, and we would eventually have to take a break and come back later.
My experience is the result of lockdown, and if it had not happened, I might not have taken advantage of this study method. I would highly advise the next generations of students, either MA, Ph.D., or BA students, to pursue this method even after the pandemic. Finally, what matters most is finding somebody you will feel comfortable discussing and debating with during sessions. Peer tutoring is indeed rooted in this desire to share and learn with somebody; it is not individualistic but rather collective learning.
[1] Soly Mathew Biju, “Benefits of Working in Pairs in Problem Solving and Algorithms – Action Research,” Athens Journal Of Education 6, no. 3 (2019): 223–36. https://doi.org/10.30958/aje.6-3-4.
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OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Aurélia Gaignard (27 avril 2021). Lockdown and Peer Tutoring. EN-globe. Consulté le 10 novembre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/oe7b



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