Undergraduate Curricular Peer Mentoring Programs - (Hardcover)

About the Book

Whether or not a college currently offers a Supplemental Instruction program, uses peer leaders in First-year Learning Community, or assigns Peer Tutors to courses, Undergraduate Peer Mentoring Programs will provide educators with concepts, examples, and findings useful for pr...

Book Synopsis

Whether or not a college currently offers a Supplemental Instruction program, uses peer leaders in First-year Learning Community, or assigns Peer Tutors to courses, Undergraduate Peer MentoringPrograms will provide educators with concepts, examples, and findings useful for program development, innovation and enhancement. Contributors describe an international and interdisciplinary set of programs from the perspectives of program administrators, instructors, students and teaching assistants, while the editor reviews four decades of research, incorporating examples into theory and practice sections.

Review Quotes

Tania Smith's volume, Undergraduate Curricular Peer Mentoring Programs, situates the heretofore practice-oriented peer instruction literature within a well-researched theoretical framework. It will be a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners.


This book presents a sweeping, coherent overview of the many types of curricular peer mentoring practices, both institutionalized programs and unique, unaffiliated efforts, that have demonstrated their potential to improve student learning outcomes within standard post-secondary curricula. The authors commendably avoid selecting a best model in favor of emphasizing that the concept's underlying principles and guidelines permit great flexibility when applied to different disciplines, course structures, and types of participants. The authors also deal effectively with the proliferation of definitions, labels, and education jargon that can confuse and intimidate an outsider looking just for a few good ideas to get started with peer mentoring. In particular, their decision to intersperse descriptions of specific programs with succinct summaries of education research is a nice touch. The last chapter can be used as a very practical "how to" guide for educators setting up the framework of a new peer mentoring program or reviewing the operation of an existing one. In summary, in may ways this book is the educational equivalent to Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking: comprehensive, authoritative, a rich resource to be kept within arm's reach by educators who want to enhance learning outcomes with the best ingredients available - students themselves.

About the Author

Tania Smith is assistant professor of communications studies in the Department of Communication and Culture and has been involved in developing peer mentoring programs, hosting peer mentors, and teaching peer mentors across the University of Calgary since 2005. With a background in English literature, rhetoric and writing studies, she has studied innovative program and course development involving service-learning, mentoring and other forms of collaborative learning. She has co-authored with two senior peer mentors a textbook titled Curricular Peer Mentoring: A Handbook for Undergraduate Peer Mentors Serving and Learning in Courses (Trafford, 2009) and is author of a 2008 Innovative Higher Education article on the pilot year of the arts peer mentoring program.