Impact of Undergraduate Peer Teaching Experience on Chemistry Problem-Solving

Peer learning programs are widely used in STEM education and have been shown to be beneficial to learners in introductory STEM courses. However, the impacts of these programs on the students in peer teacher roles have not been studied as thoroughly. Here, we aimed to investigate the impact of peer teaching experience on how undergraduate STEM students approach chemistry problem solving. Upper-division STEM students, both with and without teaching experience, were given two general chemistry–level problems: one computational thermodynamics problem and one conceptual question about physical properties. Responses from the thermodynamics question were coded for problem-solving techniques, and comparison by t-test indicated that students with peer teaching experience used a greater variety of problem-solving strategies than students without peer teaching experience. Sets of anonymized correct responses to the physical property question were sent to experts, who were asked to rank the responses from “best” to “worst.” Students with peer teaching experience were more likely to be ranked “best.” This study indicates that peer teaching experience is valuable for STEM undergraduate students by broadening how these students approach problem solving, which will benefit these students as they move on to more advanced coursework requiring more complex problem-solving skills.