Establishing Peer Mentor-Led Writing Groups in Large First-Year Courses

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by awa

A pilot project at the University of Saskatchewan tested peer mentor-led Writing Groups to strengthen academic writing in a large first-year Agriculture class with 200 students. With the course professor and the Writing Centre, peer mentors were trained and led four two-hour group sessions built on a process approach to writing. Students received frequent, structured feedback and rubric-guided peer review, which reduced intimidation, improved confidence, and supported stronger term paper results.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time25 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Project Design

Writing Groups Curriculum

Rubric-Guided Feedback

10 Establishing Peer Mentor-Led Writing Groups in Large First-Year Courses Sarah Marcoux, Liv Marken, & Stan Yu University of Saskatchewan This paper describes the results of a pilot project designed to improve students’ academic writing in a large (200-student) first-year Agriculture class at the University of Saskatchewan. In collaboration with the course’s professor, the Writing Centre coordinator anda summer student designed curriculum for four two-hour Writing Group sessions carved out of weekly scheduled lab times, and trained peer mentors to lead students through the writing process. Writing Groups fostered a sense of community in the otherwise-isolated process of writing a challenging term paper, and provided opportunities for rich and frequent feedback. Ultimately, Writing Groups were shown to demystify the process of academic writing, making it more manageable and accessible to students. Introduction E mpunihvaesriszitiny-glevteol anewcademtudec writsing thinea vdialuscieplionfe is crucial, but at the same time it can be daunting for a professor of a large class 1 to carry out writing instruction and marking, even with teaching assistants (Harfitt, 2011; Taylor, 2008; Ward & Jenkins, 1992) . Previous studies have documented clear differences between the types of writing asked of students in high school and what they must produce in university writing assignments (Beil & Knight, 2007) . In many institutions, the work of teaching writing is relegated to a first-year composition class; however, studies have shown that first-year students continue to demonstrate significant deficiencies in university-level academic writing, undermining two determinants of increased student retention:“academic-related skills [and] academic selfconfidence”(Lotkowski, Robbins, & Noeth, 2004, p. 7) . With one-class ‘fix-it’ solutions and growing class sizes, opportunities for professors to help students learn to write in a discipline may be few (Graves & Graves, 2006; O’Brien-Moran & Soiferman, 2010) . 1 Large classes have been generally defined as classes with enrollments above one hundred students (Boyd, 2010) . In addition to the need to address first-year students’ skills in and competence with academic writing, the inherent needs of writers must be addressed. As expressed by Pinter (1995), “All writers, especially first year writers, need support from peers and that’s another reason why learning to write is not an individual task. Instructors must also support students in several ways, including individual conferencing and sensitive marginalia” (p. 4) . While it is common practice for instructors to provide constructive feedback on writing assignments, in large classes the feedback may not be as rich and meaningful, and thus is often left unread (Orsmond & Merry, 2011) . In response to these challenges, the University of Saskatchewan College of Agriculture & Bioresources, in collaboration with the Writing Centre, piloted Writing Groups in a 200-student first-year class. The primary goal was to create a peer mentor-led collaborative learning environment focused on teaching the process of academic research and writing; exposing students to regular, structured, and clear feedback using detailed rubrics; and encouraging a continuous dialogue about, and practice with, writing. A thorough assessment of the pilot revealed increased levels of confidence and decreased levels of struggle with academic writing amongst students, resulting in positive results on their term paper grades. Project Design The Writing Groups program is driven by student peer mentoring, which can be defined as “an encouraging and supportive one-to-one relationship with a more experienced [student]…characterized by positive role modeling, promotion of raised aspirations, positive reinforcement…and joint problem-solving”(Topping, 2005, p. 632) . At the University of Saskatchewan, peer mentors are selected for their strong academic performance and w

FAQs

What problem does the pilot project address?

Large first-year classes often struggle to provide rich, meaningful writing instruction and feedback. The project targets students’ deficiencies in university-level academic writing and writer support needs.

How were the Writing Groups structured?

Four two-hour Writing Group sessions were embedded in scheduled lab times. Each lab had one peer mentor leading about 20 students through writing activities.

What approach did the curriculum use?

The curriculum used a process approach, breaking writing into prewriting, drafting, and editing/proofreading. Each session produced stage-specific outputs while building reusable writing strategies.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by awa