Blog Entry
One of my recent projects has involved the use of peer education, or the use of students to serve as supporters and peer advisors for fellow students on issues of acclimating to campus and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. These programs involve some vetting and training of students to support these services. This endeavor is a way to save on funds, but it’s also about packaging important information in a way that may be more effectively delivered to people—through respected peers.
As para professionals, these students have limits to what they can actually do. There’s no formal teaching for credit. There’s no therapy, There’s no in-depth advisement. However, they will share relevant information.
They will design programs and outreaches to their fellow students. They sometimes will let staff administrators know about the attitudes and ideas of their peers.
Some “alumni” may also be tapped to be peer educators, given their own experiences having gone through a particular program. The example I saw related to study abroad.
From a cursory view, it seems that these programs are funded in a hit-and-miss fashion with student funds, FTE credits (occasionally), the rare grant, and fund-raising events such as t-shirt sales. These may be housed bureaucratically as student clubs, or they may be part of formal student health / student services programming.
This phenomenon of peer educating has been moving online, too. There are some sites with the express purpose of creating community among college students and supporting their social lives and interactions. While those spaces have been more free-wheeling than organized, some universities seem to be moving in the direction of formalizing some of those peer supports.
Comments
Find Online Schools 4 months, 1 week ago
Thanks for your blog post. I agree, it will be interesting to see how the web 2.0 spaces (social media) and college education evolved and mesh.
Juan Suarez 3 months, 2 weeks ago
I think that it was a natural change that formal education institutions had to do. tradition aducation has proven to have al ot of faults. however it has not been proven that online learning could be so much better than the traditional one, internet offers a lot of things to imporve education and make it more enjoyable for kids. But let that internet educate people could becmoe in a real mistake.
Sarah, online high school student 3 months, 2 weeks ago
Traditional education doesn't have to go. Many, many people still need it. You can learn many things online but you still need socializing at least.
PHP Scripts 3 months, 1 week ago
Socialization is definitely important to the overall lessons to be learned by an education, but it should be consider and advancement to have the online realm, especially with the various social networking sites out there, somewhat organized by the institution itself so that they can help student benefit from the offline and online aspects of education.
Resveratrol 3 months, 1 week ago
Many, many people still need it. You can learn many things online but you still need socializing at least.
Hammerbacher 3 months ago
very interesting post. online learning may be a good way because you can get all the informations you need via internet but a good old book will always be handy, because you can "touch" the knowledge in there and reading in a book is much more comfortable than staring at a tft-screen for hours.
Red Wine 3 weeks, 2 days ago
However it has not been proven that online learning could be so much better than the traditional one, internet offers a lot of things to imporve education and make it more enjoyable for kids. But let that internet educate people could becmoe in a real mistake.
Bulk sale Flash drives 4 days, 11 hours ago
Socializing with others is great, but I believe, that the most you can learn, you learn from yourself and from practice only.
ramesh 2 days, 12 hours ago
online learning may be a good way because you can get all the informations you need via internet but a good old book will always be handy, because you can "touch" the knowledge in there and reading in a book is much more comfortable than staring at a tft-screen for hours.
Teeth Whitening 2 days, 9 hours ago
I think this will be great idea .students can easily share their views with each other .And if any student is facing any problem he can solve his problem online.
Colon Cleanse 9 hours, 24 minutes ago
Peer and para education online is a good idea. Research suggests that people are more likely to hear and personalize messages, and thus to change their attitudes and behaviors and this online education can help them in that.
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