Man–machine partnership to support remote peer tutoring: Psychological, pedagogical, and technological considerations for the development of a mobile application

This chapter explains the man-machine partnership to support remote peer tutoring among university students through a mobile application called MENTOR. Underpinned by Vygotskian social-cultural theory of learning, it distils the essential conditions of learning through social interactions with the use of tools and language within learners' zone of proximal development (ZPD). Relevant psychological concepts that affect peer tutoring were considered, including self-determination theory, self-system theory, and self-regulation. These factors affect students' motivation to learn, as well as their needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Peer tutoring can be used to respond to students' help-seeking requests and support one another to fulfil these psychological needs and support the processes. Based on these considerations, MENTOR, a mobile application, was designed and developed with several affordances—24/7 peer tutoring, tutor identification, tutor-tutee matching, canvas for shared resources, communication tools for collaboration and scaffolding—that were aligned with the theories and pedagogical considerations. The mobile application mediates interactions among student-student and student-tools- resources. The man-machine division of roles is essential so that the affordances of the mobile applications can be effectively leveraged for productive peer tutoring. MENTOR has been tested with university students with promising results. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.