CAO
The power of cohort learning – how your peers can teach you just as much as the experts
From happiness graphs to asynchronous job interviews and live digital whiteboards, our Creativity, Problem Solving and Design Thinking course uses innovative activities which encourage peers to learn from each other’s experiences and mindsets.
Results from our Cambridge Advance Online courses show us that in a cohort learning experience, the participants learn as much from each other as they do from the tutor. So how do you create opportunities for peer learning in online courses?
Listen as Learning Designer Emily Patterson and Dr Nathan Crilly discuss how they made peer learning and discussion the backbone of the course, which won Gold at the 2025 Learning Technologies Awards for Best Use of Social and Collaborative Technology.
“We're not just trying to deliver content that each individual absorbs and becomes more proficient in. We're trying to draw out the experiences and perspectives that different learners have already developed and have them trade that between each other,” shares Nathan, course lead and Professor of Design, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge.
“The course actually doesn't start with creativity at all – it steps back and looks at the different ways in which any of us can think, the different thinking skills that we can exploit,” he adds.
Creativity, Problem Solving and Design Thinking attracts people from a huge range of industries and disciplines who want to expand their thinking. The exercises show how even people on the same team can have completely different approaches and mindsets – and how by working together, they produce much better results.
“We find people who are really good at generating analogies, but they find it harder to generate solutions from those analogies. Or people for whom that's the opposite – they find it very hard to come up with the original analogical comparison, but once someone has made that comparison, they're greater than generating ideas from that,” says Nathan.
Ready to transform your mindset and turn roadblocks into opportunities? Book your place on Creativity, Problem Solving and Design Thinking today.
