What is P2P Learning?
Here at P2P Learning, our goal is to promote learning through thought-provoking, “peer to peer” discussions in place of teacher-led student discussions. Here’s why our method works:
- Think back to ancient Greece and remember Socrates, who most famously educated his students by asking questions in “seminars” to guide them toward reasonably sound conclusions. Here at P2P, we believe he was onto something! Given a simple subject, students should be capable of elaborating upon their ideas to form coherent, defensible essays, whether in the form of fictional story-telling, eloquent poetry, or straightforward opinion-writing. That’s where part 1 of our method comes into play: after registering an account and optionally attending a Zoom meeting (for history and reading), students can upload their writing to be peer-reviewed. Once approved, we publish the submission on our website and the discussion begins unregulated (within reason and without explicit content, of course)!
- But why not teacher-to-student learning? There’s nothing wrong with it, of course; there’s a reason schools continue to utilize such methods. Think of it this way: sitting on an airplane while the pilot is in control is one thing. When all controllable parties are cooperative, the journey will go smoothly for the passenger. Piloting the plane, however, requires much more training and active thought. The same idea applies to academics. For students who wish to go above and beyond the clouds, learning to pilot the plane is a vital skill which, more often than not, is overlooked for far too long. At P2P Learning, we teach students to “fly the plane” with focuses on history, reading and writing, because these subjects are so multifaceted and relevant in our daily lives that to not be excellent at any area is the first crack on a sheet of glass. Keep in mind that we are not looking to replace any student’s efforts in school, but rather to enhance their critical thinking and give them room to share their skills.
To put it simply, P2P Learning is an online forum where students are encouraged to share, discuss, and critique their peers (though, again, within reason). Our learning environment is meant to foster old ideas and inspire new perspectives.
Enjoy!
Meet the Team: Annabelle Zhang, Founder
Hi everyone! My name is Annabelle Zhang, and I am the founder of P2P Learning. I’m so excited to read your original writing and witness your improvement!
Some background about me:
- I attend Millburn High School, and I’ll be a junior 2021-22
- I’m the Editor-in-Chief of our school newspaper, The Miller, and the Vice President of Community Outreach on our school’s speech and debate team.
- I’ll be attending the Creative Writing: Nonfiction and Journalism course at Columbia’s Precollege. In previous summers, I attended creative writing programs at CTY and the journalism program at the School of the New York Times.
- Of my writing accomplishments, I’m most proud of my National Silver Medal from Scholastic Art and Writing Awards!
But that’s enough about who I am. You didn’t come here to hear me brag about myself, you’re here to learn about what prompted me to start P2P Learning in the first place. Here’s a little bit of background.
To put it simply, I was not prepared for high school. Having managed to make my way through middle school by procrastinating and skimming through my work, I never developed a proper work ethic and never planned to do so. Somehow, as it turns out, watching hours and hours of Food Network never really cultivated my study habits. Even when I did sit down to work, assignments which should have taken thirty minutes to complete took twice as long because I was so easily distracted. Nonetheless, I scored well enough to end every school year with good grades; with such validation, I quickly became far too comfortable with postponing essays and presentations until the night before, and submitted my (unedited) first drafts way more than I should have. Unaware of the consequences of having a very weak foundation of knowledge, I walked through the heavy-metal doors of high school with confidence that I could be exemplary in high school as well.
I was very, very wrong. My grades in all areas suffered and for the first time ever, my English teacher called me in to discuss my grade on a recent essay I had completely missed the mark on. I remember thinking, I don’t have any experience writing such heavily-analytical essays! How can I possibly improve?
By November, I finally acknowledged that my middle-school-approach towards exams and classes just wasn’t working. Over Thanksgiving break, I gave myself an ultimatum: figure out what’s going wrong and fix it, or give up on freshman year. I chose the former.
Making changes and learning the study habits I should have developed in middle school was incredibly difficult, but it all boiled down to one point:
Practice, practice, practice
There’s several reasons I believe this worked for me: it finally developed my work ethic, improved my efficiency while I was learning, and (most importantly) granted me experience in all types of writing.
But, there were limitations to my strategies, especially when it came to English and history. My teachers were busy as-is and rarely had time to look at an additional 1000-word essay; discussions in and out of class with my peers and upperclassmen were limited by the strict curriculum and I rarely had a chance to examine nuanced ideas in-depth. My struggles were only amplified by lockdown.
I was rambling at dinner one night about how much more efficient learning would be if we could simply peer review. It was like I struck gold: why didn’t I just find a website where I could submit my work for peer review? It would relieve my teachers of any additional burden, allow me to work on a flexible schedule, and still provide me with the critiques I needed to improve! Alas, I found no such thing.
And so, P2P Learning was born.
In biology, the term mutualism refers to a relationship in which all organisms reap a net benefit from a relationship, and that’s what P2P Learning is inspired by! Through sharing their own writing to receive critiques and reviewing their peers’ works, students now wield a double-edged sword: they improve immensely by applying critiques from their audience, and they help their friends improve as well. By mirroring nature, students finally have an around-the-clock opportunity to consistently think, write, and share.
Publishing P2P Learning is a dream come true and I can’t wait to witness everyone’s improvement! Feel free to contact me anytime with questions, comments, or concerns at 247p2plearning@gmail.com and I will get back to you as soon as possible!