Peer instruction

Mazur, E. Peer Instruction A User s Manual Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1997. 

Many clicker software programs allow the instructor to not show the histogram of responses to a conceptest question by default. This is useful for situations where the instructor would like the students to vote and then to discuss their answer with a neighbor for a minute, then to revote, following the peer instruction model. However, it is more common to show the histogram from the first vote to see if discussion is necessary. 

Mazur, E. (1997). Peer instruction A user s manual. Englewood Cliffs Prentice Hall. 

Crouch, C. H., Watkins, J., Fagen, A. R, Mazur, E. (2007). Peer instruction Engaging students one-on-one, all at once. In E. F. Redish P. J. Cooney (Eds.), Research-based reform of university physics. College Park American Assoeiation of Physics Teachers. 

Turpen, C., Finkelstein, N. D. (2010). The construction of different classroom norms during peer instruction Students perceive differences. Physical Review Special Topics Physics Education Research, 6, 020123. 

Learning Catalytics is a technology that has grown out of twenty years of cutting-edge research, innovation, and implementation of interactive teaching and peer instruction. 

Peer instruction. Peer instruction is promoted by Harvard Professor Eric Mazur [12] to improve students understanding of the underlying concepts of the subject. In lectures, students are asked to respond to multiple-choice questions. Some of the inaccurate answers map to known common misconceptions, which often exist due to conflicting naive preexisting conceptions. Peer instruction allows students to actively put their mental models to the test and obliges them to confront any discrepancies. 

The peer instruction cycle is implonented in five steps ... 

When there is disagreement within the group, students are given a few minutes to convince their neighbors (peer instruction) of their answer choice. The intent is that students think for themselves and practice ways to express their understanding in words. 

Results show that peer instruction is a very effective way of improving students conceptual understanding by confronting misconceptions and by practicing their ability to reason conceptually. Further, students increased conceptual understanding leads to improved performance also in conventional problem solving. The effectiveness of peer instruction lies in its pedagogical approach, which does not necessarily require an electronic response system. 

Quizzes for reflection. Quizzes can be used in the beginning of a lecture to help students recapitulate a previous lecture. This method was developed at Chalmers University of Technology in an attempt to enhance active reflection, using fewer resources than muddy cards [14]. It is related to peer instruction in that it uses five or six multiple-choice questions that students discuss with then-peers. However, there are several differences. Students spend about seven minutes... 

Many instructors combine two or more active and experiential learning methods in a single course. For example, an advanced course in aerodynamics at MIT combines peer instruction, readings and problems assigned prior to lecture, and team-based project-based learning. In addition, the course includes oral examinations as a method of student learning assessment. Box 6.2 describes this example. 

Beatty Gerace (2009) stated that they were aware of only three separate efforts to present and justify an explicit, coherent pedagogy for CRS-based teaching. These were (i) Peer Instruction, (ii) Question-Driven Instruction and (iii) Technology-enhanced formative assessment. These methods are briefly described here because the new method described in section 3 takes some elements and ideas from them. 

An important difference between Peer Instruction and A2L is that Mazur s approach is intended for intermittent insertion within more traditional teaching methods. The A2L method is intended as the basic structure of class activity, other traditional teaching methods are only used when needed and motivated by the questions and discussion. 

The method, as in the case on Mazur s Peer Instruction, uses questions at strategic junctures of more traditional teaching methods. Hence, the difficulties associated with Question-Driven Instruction present in the A2L and TEFA approaches are avoided. The method however, takes important elements of these... 

Present the question with the possible answers and poll the answers only after peer instruction amongst the students has occurred. 

Peer instruction in step 2 reaps the benefits to foster deep learning as suggested by Mazur (1997). It should motivate and engage the students with the subject. 

The present paper has used an incremental and rigorous research approach to develop and implement a CRS-based teaching method that promotes and enhances deep learning. Four stages that correspond to four different student cohorts were used for its development and to analyse its effectiveness. Each of the stages has attempted to look at effects caused by various approaches widely accepted in the educational literature. Amongst them, peer instruction, question-driven instruction and meta-level communication have been described, discussed and analysed where applicable. 

There seemed to be a strong inter-dependency between the various approaches/methods that were incrementally added into the method. It was also observed that peer instruction requires a certain amount of experience to achieve conclusive results. 

It was demonstrated that although examination results alone seemed to indicate that there was no effect on the results caused by peer instruction, the CRS statistics demonstrated that such addition is indeed a very relevant part of the newly proposed method. 

Mazur, Eric. 2004-2007. Interactive Teaching Promoting Better Learning Using Peer Instruction and Just-in-TimeTeaching. Upper Saddle River, NJ Pearson. DVD. Harvard University physicist demonstrates the use of peer instruction and Just-in-Time teaching in an interactive workshop. 

Mazur, Eric. 1997. Peer Instruction A User s Manual. Upper Saddle River, NJ Prentice Hall. Contains CD. Highly cited book on improving learning through shortening lectures and having students teach each other concepts. 

Mackay, W.E., Pothier, G., LetondaL C., Bpegh, K., Sprensen, H.E. The missing link augmenting biology laboratory notebooks. In Proceedings of UIST 02, pp. 41-50 (2002) Mazur, E. Peer Instruction A User s Manual. Prentice Hall, New Jersey (1997)... 

It saves time to prioritize. First, focus on those who "want to dance," the ones willing to get involved. Then, turn these leaders loose on the folks who "came to the dance" but are reluctant to get involved. At least these people are willing to consider a change proposal. Peer instruction can cultivate change champions (Principle 3) as well as increase participation. When a critical mass of individuals gets involved and achieves success as a result of change, many initial resisters will join in—out of choice, not coercion. 

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