Online reciprocal peer tutoring approach in Facebook: Measuring students' critical thinking

Abstract

Critical thinking skills are one of the essential employability skills for graduates when entering the workforce. The lack of critical thinking skills among Malaysian graduates is a concern, as these skills are vital for success in the 21st century. Therefore, this paper aims to study the effects of online reciprocal peer tutoring (RPT) through Facebook discussion on students' critical thinking. In this study, the instructor used the online RPT approach on Facebook to nurture students to think critically. In RPT, the tutor role is switched between participants in each task, giving equal opportunities to all learners to benefit from the tutor and tutee role. This approach was integrated into their learning for four weeks to increase students' critical thinking. They need to be involved in 4 critical thinking tasks based on Bloom's taxonomy during the learning process. Twentynine undergraduate students from the School of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia completed the validated instrument, Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal test (inference, assumption, deduction, interpretation, evaluation arguments) before and after the treatment. The findings show that it is significantly different in making inference (Z=- 3.85, p=.000<*.05) and deduction (Z=-3.627, p=.000<*.05) criterion in post-test. These revealed that students who engaged in the online RPT environment showed positive improvements in those criteria in critical thinking after the treatment. In conclusion, students' critical thinking can be nurtured using Facebook with active learning strategies such as online RPT.