“If I’m brutally honest research has never appealed to me …”: The Problems and Successes of a Peer Research Project

This paper describes the use of a peer research methodology to explore disaffected young people’s views on alternative education. This model was adopted in order to try to ensure an equilibrium of power between interviewer and interviewee, allow marginalised young people’s voices to be heard and help generate social action. The approach is examined from the perspective of both the peer research and adult research teams. An experiential and honest account is given including the problems and successes, as well as the lessons learned. The paper concludes by considering the value of the model, whether it helps to reach those alienated from education and any evidence that it provides an opportunity for them to have a stake in their future.

International on-line reciprocal peer tutoring to promote modern language development in primary schools

The paper reports data from an on-line peer tutoring project. In the project 78, 9–12-year-old students from Scotland and Catalonia peer tutored each other in English and Spanish via a managed on-line envi- ronment. Significant gains in first language (Catalonian pupils) modern language (Scottish pupils) and attitudes towards modern languages (both Catalonian and Scottish pupils) were reported for the exper- imental group as compared to the control group. Results indicated that pupils tutored each other in using Piagetian techniques of error correction during the project. Error correction provided by tutors to tutees focussed on morph syntaxys, more specifically the correction of verbs. Peer support provided via the on- line environment was predominantly based on the tutor giving the right answer to the tutee. High rates of impact on tutee corrected messages were observed. The implications for peer tutoring initiative taking place via on-line environments are discussed. Implications for policy and practice are explored

Enabling Robust and Efficient Distributed Computation in Dynamic Peer-to-Peer Networks

Motivated by the need for designing efficient and robust fully-distributed computation in highly dynamic networks such as Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks, we study distributed protocols for constructing and maintaining dynamic network topologies with good expansion properties. Our goal is to maintain a sparse (bounded degree) expander topology despite heavy {\em churn} (i.e., nodes joining and leaving the network continuously over time). We assume that the churn is controlled by an adversary that has complete knowledge and control of what nodes join and leave and at what time and has unlimited computational power, but is oblivious to the random choices made by the algorithm. Our main contribution is a randomized distributed protocol that guarantees with high probability the maintenance of a {\em constant} degree graph with {\em high expansion} even under {\em continuous high adversarial} churn. Our protocol can tolerate a churn rate of up to $O(n/\poly\log(n))$ per round (where $n$ is the stable network size). Our protocol is efficient, lightweight, and scalable, and it incurs only $O(\poly\log(n))$ overhead for topology maintenance: only polylogarithmic (in $n$) bits needs to be processed and sent by each node per round and any node's computation cost per round is also polylogarithmic. The given protocol is a fundamental ingredient that is needed for the design of efficient fully-distributed algorithms for solving fundamental distributed computing problems such as agreement, leader election, search, and storage in highly dynamic P2P networks and enables fast and scalable algorithms for these problems that can tolerate a large amount of churn.

Young People, Peer-to-Peer Grooming and Sexual Offending: Understanding and Responding to Harmful Sexual Behaviour within a Social Media Society

There is ample evidence that young people engage in grooming and harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) using social media with enough frequency to make those behaviours important con-cerns for both society and care providers. This article provides a critical overview of the con-ceptual and empirical foundations of peer-to-peer grooming and the use of social media with-in the context of HSB. Based on this learning, it ultimately introduces a new model of inter-vention and of professional practice, which provides the standards for micro-level decision-making about goals, methods and assessment tailored to this specific offending context.

Signal Reception Characteristics in the Proximity of Alice and Bob for Secure Indoor Peer-to-Peer Communications At 2.45 GHz

Mutual variation of the received signal which occurs as a consequence of the channel reciprocity property has recently been proposed as a viable method for secret key generation. However, this cannot be strictly maintained in practice as the property is applicable only in the absence of interference. To ensure the propagation defined key remains secret, one requirement is that there remain high degrees of uncertainty between the legitimate users channel response and that of any eavesdropper's. In this paper, we investigate whether such de-correlation occurs for an indoor point-to-point link at 2.45 GHz. This is achieved by computing the localized correlation coefficient between the simultaneous channel response measured by the legitimate users and that of multiple distributed eavesdroppers for static and dynamic scenarios.

The effectiveness of peer mentoring in promoting a positive transition to higher education for first-year undergraduate students: a mixed methods systematic review protocol

Background: The global transfer of nursing and midwifery education to higher education institutes has led to student nurses and midwives experiencing challenges previously faced by traditional third-level students, including isolation, loneliness, financial difficulties and academic pressure. These challenges can contribute to increased stress and anxiety levels which may be detrimental to the successful transition to higher education, thus leading to an increase in attrition rates. Peer mentoring as an intervention has been suggested to be effective in supporting students in the transition to third-level education through enhancing a sense of belongingness and improving student satisfaction, engagement and retention rates. This proposed systematic review aims to determine the effectiveness of peer mentoring in enhancing levels of student engagement, sense of belonging and overall satisfaction of first-year undergraduate students following transition into higher education.
Methods: MEDLINE, Web of Knowledge, ProQuest, Embase, CINAHL, ERIC, PsycINFO and CENTRAL databases will be searched for qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods studies on the implementation of peer assessment strategies in higher education institutes (HEIs) or universities for full-time, first-year adult students (>17 years). Included studies will be limited to the English language. The quality of included studies will be assessed using a validated Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT). The findings will be presented as a narrative synthesis or meta-analysis as appropriate following sequential explanatory synthesis.
Discussion: The review will provide clear, non-biased evidence-based guidance to all third-level educators on the effectiveness of peer-mentoring programmes for first-year undergraduates. The review is necessary to help establish which type of peer mentoring is most effective. The evidence from qualitative and quantitative studies drawn from the international literature will be utilised to illustrate the best way to implement and evaluate peer mentoring as an effective intervention and will be useful in guiding future research and practice in this area. These findings may be applied internationally across all disciplines.