Erin Rinto - Peer-Assisted Learning in Academic Libraries

Patricia Iannuzzi

Annie Donahue, Carolyn Gamtso, and Kim Donovan

Brett Bodemer

Genevieve Schaack and Annie Zeidman-Karpinski

Pamela Martin

Erin Rinto, John Watts, and Rosan Mitola

Anna Esty, Alexis Gomez, Ramona Islam, Vegas Longlois, and Reed Lowrie

Theresa McDevitt and Malaika M. Turner

Tyler A. Dunn, Jan H. Kemp, and Ellen V. Blumberg

Jenny Wong-Welch

Clinton Baugess, Mallory Jallas, Meggan Smith, and Janelle Wertzberger

Michael Courtney and Kate Otto

Emilia R. Marcyk and Benjamin Oberdick

Joshua Vossler

Jessica Hronchek and Rachel Bishop

I have spent more than 30 years of my career framing academic libraries as partners in student learning: modeling action on various campuses, sharing strategies within our profession, and working on advocacy and curricular reform within higher education arenas ranging from professional associations to regional accreditation groups to private foundations. More than ever, I am convinced that academic libraries are uniquely positioned to contribute to student learning in and out of the classroom.

Our early efforts in articulating and embedding information literacy learning outcomes that overlap and integrate with critical thinking and oral and written communication have created a generation of librarians participating in campus conversations about student learning. We teach, we partner with classroom instructors on course and assignment design, and we intentionally design learning spaces and experiences outside of the classroom. We are likely the only unit on campus that contributes to student learning through both curricular and co-curricular experiences. We provide one-on-one instruction at service points, turning routine questions into teachable moments for guided inquiry. We employ pedagogy of place in reshaping our physical and virtual spaces to encourage a variety of student learning styles and preferences, supporting group and individual learning. We use our classrooms for formal instruction sessions and topical workshops, and we use our computer spaces to guide students as producers of their own knowledge, employing digital tools and techniques and practicing all the literacies that accompany them.

I have long supported the research claiming that teaching is the highest form of learning, which means that peer-assisted teaching and learning is a winwin environment for both peer leaders and peer learners. When you consider the library as creator and facilitator of intentionally designed peer learning experiences, you have a trifectaa three-way winning combination for the peer leaders, the peer learners, and the library!

The diversity of learning experiences created by libraries provides many opportunities to embed peer learning into those environments, and I have experimented with these practices for more than 25 years. Over time, I have experienced a series of aha moments, leading to further experimentation and innovation. In some cases, I designed experiences to encourage and nurture peer learning among students as our users. In other situations, I created programs for library student employees who were trained, mentored, and supported to function as peer teachers. One of my first experiences was almost unintentional, back in the late 1980s when technological innovation in the form of CD-ROM and locally hosted databases were made available to students and other library users for the first time. The role of librarians as intermediaries to information was removed, and users were catapulted into the role of direct consumer. I hired my first student rovers in those years to extend the reference reach into the computer help space and provide peer assistance with technology applications. But I noticed something from those first peer leaders: they excelled academically because they learned how to do research and they were extensively trained and provided opportunities for continual learning. They even began to bring back stories of introducing their classroom instructors to the latest databases acquired by the libraries.

The CD-ROM era quickly gave way to the Internet. These were difficult transition years for generations of library users, classroom faculty, and even librarians. Library anxiety was real, especially in first-generation college students, returning students who completed their education before the Internet, and international students adjusting to cultural and procedural differences in library environments. It was quickly obvious that students were more likely to ask for help from another student, than from an authority figure behind a desk.

Almost overnight, the passive study spaces provided by libraries to complement collections were morphing into learning spaces as computers proliferated and peers were used to extend the one-on-one instruction provided at reference desks and other service points. Almost unintentionally, libraries were extending their impact on co-curricular student learning, not just through new services provided by student employees, but to the student employees themselves.