How this project came to be

Between 2015 and 2018, the Student Chapter of the System Dynamics (SD) Society sponsored the creation of nine peer mentoring groups (PMGs). PMGs are widely recognized as an important way to support learning and professional development, especially by novices (Ashwin, 2003; Terrion and Leonard, 2007; Huizing, 2012; Dhirasasna et al., 2021). This note reports on the experiences of members of these groups, leaders of the nine groups, and senior faculty membersii Most of the senior faculty members had prior experience with a version of peer mentoring described by Richardson et al. (2015). who volunteered to work with some of the groups. Many PMG members were PhD students, while others worked in academia but not as PhD students or in industry and consultancy.

Forming new group cohorts started at the International Conference of the System Dynamics Society in Delft, the Netherlands, in 2016 and continued in the following years. This effort was led by Larry Gottschamer, then President of the Student Chapter, and Professor Laura Black, who was serving as an informal adviser to the Student Chapter. The groups were formed based on either mutual research interests or geographic location. While some PMGs fell apart soon after their formation, five of the nine groups were still regularly meeting at the moment of their participation in this survey.

A typical PMG meeting followed the following format:

• Meetings for 1 hour via online tools (e.g. Zoom, Google Hangouts, WebEx, Skype) on a biweekly or monthly basis.
• 4 to 10 participants.
• 5 minutes for informal group updates, then 55 minutes for one participant's presentation, and feedback from other participants.
• Presentations usually about participants’ current research, but other SD topics also welcome.
• Feedback and questions throughout the meeting or at the end of the presentation at the presenter's request.

Some groups had fixed meeting days and times, which were determined at the beginning of the year during a kickoff meeting to accommodate as many group members as possible. Others preferred to be flexible and set a time at the end of each meeting by considering personal schedules.

For this research note we sent a survey to all current and former members of the groups. Next, we used a semi-structured interview protocol to interview the leaders of the groups as well as senior faculty members who were embedded in some of the groups. Results of this research are presented below after a brief discussion of how this work relates more broadly to novice learning in system dynamics.

中文翻译：

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让彼此更聪明：评估同伴指导小组作为支持学习系统动态的一种方式

这个项目是如何形成的

2015 年至 2018 年间，系统动力学 (SD) 协会的学生分会赞助创建了九个同伴指导小组 (PMG)。PMG 被广泛认为是支持学习和专业发展的重要方式，尤其是新手（Ashwin，  2003；Terrion 和 Leonard，  2007；Huizing，  2012；Dhirasasna等，  2021）。本笔记报告了这些小组的成员、九个小组的领导和高级教职员工的经历。i大多数资深教员都曾有过 Richardson等人描述的同伴指导版本的经验。（2015 年）。谁自愿与一些团体合作。许多 PMG 成员是博士生，而其他人在学术界工作，但不是博士生或工业和咨询业。

2016 年在荷兰代尔夫特举行的系统动力学学会国际会议上开始组建新的小组，并在接下来的几年中继续进行。这项工作由时任学生分会主席拉里·戈特查默 (Larry Gottschamer) 和担任学生分会非正式顾问的劳拉·布莱克教授领导。这些小组是基于共同的研究兴趣或地理位置而成立的。虽然一些 PMG 成立后不久就分崩离析，但九个小组中的五个在参与本次调查时仍在定期开会。

典型的 PMG 会议遵循以下格式：

• 每两周或每月通过在线工具（例如 Zoom、Google Hangouts、WebEx、Skype）召开 1 小时的会议。
• 4 到 10 名参与者。
• 5 分钟用于非正式小组更新，然后 55 分钟用于一名参与者的演示以及其他参与者的反馈。
• 演讲通常是关于参与者当前的研究，但也欢迎其他 SD 主题。
• 在整个会议期间或在演示结束时应演示者的要求提供反馈和问题。

一些小组有固定的会议日期和时间，这些日期和时间是在年初的启动会议上确定的，以容纳尽可能多的小组成员。其他人则更愿意灵活地考虑个人日程安排，在每次会议结束时设定一个时间。

在本研究笔记中，我们向小组的所有现任和前任成员发送了一份调查问卷。接下来，我们使用半结构化访谈协议采访了小组的领导者以及嵌入某些小组的高级教职员工。在简要讨论了这项工作如何更广泛地与系统动力学中的新手学习相关之后，这项研究的结果在下面呈现。