The Center for Advanced Learning at Washington University, also known as Cornerstone, recently received a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The grant will go toward research that will aid disability resources in helping University students participate in the Peer-Led Team Learning program (PLTL).
“It is a grant that we were awarded to provide additional support to students enrolled in PLTL who have attention deficit disorders and learning disorders,” explained Christine Street, assistant director of disability resources at Cornerstone, who developed the grant. “It was an outgrowth with what we see in our office and it was just appropriate to meet the needs of the student population.”
Cornerstone offers PLTL sessions for large lecture-based classes, including calculus, chemistry and physics classes. During these sessions, students meet in small groups to collectively solve problems of the kind they will later see on tests. Sessions are led by an undergraduate student who has already completed and performed well in the course.
According to Street, there are 300 students registered with Cornerstone’s disability resources office. About 80 percent of those students have attention deficit disorders, learning disorders or both.
“We will be giving the peer leaders additional information and training to meet the needs of the students,” said Street. “We are also employing a learning specialist, David Parker, who will be instrumental in implementing all aspects of the grant.”
However, Cornerstone’s plans to address learning disabilities in PLTL are still being implemented. Part of the grant money will go toward giving the PLTL leaders additional training and instruction.
“We’re in the process of finalizing our literature review and curriculum.and were just awarded the grant so we haven’t started with the peer leaders yet,” said Street. “We will be training the peer leaders on issues of attention disorders and learning disorders, and how students can be intelligent-and in fact brilliant-yet still have problems with time management and organization. We will also be training the peer leaders with strategies and instruction, and that is how to help students improve executive function skills.”
Hiten Patel, a junior who leads a PLTL group for General Chemistry, explained his thoughts about the PLTL system and its current method of teaching students with disabilities. Patel suggested that, in most cases, PLTL could be useful to students.
“The general experience with PLTL has been completely positive,” said Patel. “I was in PLTL before I became a leader, and the group dynamics are helpful. For chemistry, physics and math it works very well, but not with some other subjects. I feel that it’d be really compatible with the grant as well.”
However, Patel also noted that in order to aid students who have, for example, attention deficit disorder, PLTL would have to see some changes.
“Along the lines PLTL is set up now, it would take a bit of work to be adapted,” said Patel. “It works really well now, but it’s going to take adjustment because the point of PLTL is to go beyond the simple material in classes, and puts more emphasis on the group. I feel like the training now would have to be refined-I’m pretty sure you couldn’t use the same system right now.”
On the direction of the NSF-funded research on PLTL, Street hoped that other universities would be able to benefit from the information obtained.
“It’s a great opportunity for all of our students and we hope that what we learn from this project is to see how students are served at Wash. U. and other elite institutions across the country,” said Street.
For University students without learning disabilities, PLTL remains a generally useful resource for students-especially freshmen-who may find the content of some of their classes challenging.
Lana Hompluem, a freshman who attends PLTL sessions for General Chemistry and Calculus II, recently took her first calculus exam.
“I did well on it because of PLTL, because it’s a smaller group in which you get specialized attention, and you get to practice doing problems,” said Hompluem. “The problems are usually more difficult than the ones in the book or WebWork, and it’s good to be exposed to them.”