Here is a story about a peer supporter, Maria.
She is a peer supporter for a new researcher, Michael.
In this story, Maria helps Michael learn new research tasks.
Maria has been a part of her research team for 1 year. Michael just started two months ago. Michael asked Maria how she learned so much about research. Maria remembered that when she first started work on the research team, she watched a video that talked about the scientific method, and steps of doing research. She found the YouTube link and shared the video with Michael (a).
Michael asked Maria if she could help him get better at interviewing people to collect data. Maria was happy to help Michael. She thought the best way to help Michael learn was to give him lots of help in the beginning (scaffolding) (b).
She made the activity easier by showing him how to do each step of the interview (b). Maria helped Michael this way for a few weeks, and Michael got more independent. Since Michael was learning more, Maria told him he didn’t need as much help anymore (scaffolding). Instead of having Maria help him, Michael learned how to follow a checklist to help him remember the interview questions (b).
Michael decided he was ready to try an interview on his own! Maria watched Michael complete a practice interview. After it was over, she asked him questions about what worked and what he could do differently (b). They also worked together to identify changes in how to make the interview easier for him to do.