Does PAL Work? An Exploration of Affect amongst First-year HE in FE Students

Abstract

The study evaluates a peer-assisted learning (PAL) scheme as an effective strategy in alleviating levels of negative emotions and, in the process, contributes to explorations of affect in first-year students in an HE in FE environment, with a particular focus on anxiety and related emotions. Various types of anxieties are defined in the context of a student’s experience in HE, followed by an explanation of the present interventional study in an HE in FE institution, including the survey method used to collect data analyzed through SPSS. Surprisingly, the main findings are that overall anxiety and worry increased for students belonging to most faculties with time, regardless of participation in the PAL scheme. A positive finding was nonetheless that anxiety levels increased more steadily for students who belonged to the control group. The PAL scheme may have thus influenced how less anxious PAL students felt, compared to those who did not participate in the PAL scheme who were left feeling more anxious at the end of the semester.

Keywords

• affect
• anxiety
• he in fe
• peer-assisted learning (pal)
• transition