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In this article, Stephanie Chasteen reviews the results on the effective use of peer instruction. Specifically, she first lists the instruction cycle for incorporating peer instruction in the classroom and then answers seven key questions about peer instruction:

1. Does it matter if students vote/think individually first?

2. Does it matter if you show students the histogram (after the first vote)?

3. When should you have students discuss the question?

4. Does peer discussion matter?

5. How much time should be given for voting?

6. How much does the instructor’s cues and explanation matter?

7. Does grading matter?

At last, she provides a flow chart as a guidance on how to use peer instruction for instructors.

This is the last entry of the semester, we will be back this summer with more interesting articles on teaching and learning. Stay tuned!

This week is an interesting video from Dr Eric Mazur, professor of Physics in Harvard. In this video, Dr Mazur explains how he came to abandon lecturing for peer instruction. Although he thought he was doing an excellent job of teaching by looking at student evaluations, he realized that students actually understood little of the physics principles he was teaching. Trying to explain them again to students was fruitless. In a desperate effort, he told students to discuss those concepts among themselves. What he found was that students were better prepared to teach peers complex ideas since they had only just mastered them. He thus now only teaches through peer instruction, guiding students into learning.