Positive Benefits of Peer Tutoring

What does peer tutoring actually mean? And how is it different than regular tutoring?. Peer tutoring is connecting a student to a tutor that has already learned or is trying to learn the same topics as the student. There are many types of peer tutoring, here are just a few:

• Peer Assisted Learning - struggling students are paired with a tutor to help them with their studies
• Same age - the tutor and the tutee are the same or similar ages
• Cross age - the tutor is noticeably older then the tutee
• Reciprocal - both the tutor and the tutee teach each other
• Classwide - every student in a class is paired with a tutor

Not that some of these can be combined, so you could have a classwide same age peer tutoring program.
At Tutor on Time we focus mainly on the Peer Assisted Learning. We connect students with tutors who went to the same schools and even took the same classes. 
There have been several studies on the effects of peer tutoring that have all revealed some common trends:

• Increased engagement
• More motivation to learn
• Deeper understanding of material
• Improved communication skills
• Better study habits

And these benefits are for both the tutee and the tutor, in fact one of the best ways to learn a topic is to teach it to someone else. 
Some studies have even shown that peer tutoring is twice as effective as other methods. 
It is important to note that in these studies, peer tutoring was supplemental to a course, not a replacement. Having a structured course helps to introduce topics to students while peer tutoring reinforces those topics in the minds of the students.
Overall, peer tutoring has been proven as an effective help tool that can greatly benefit both students and tutors to effectively understand their class material.
Sources:
The Education Endowment Foundation. (n.d.). Peer Tutoring. Retrieved July 11, 2021, from https://evidenceforlearning.org.au/the-toolkits/the-teaching-and-learning-toolkit/all-approaches/peer-tutoring/