Peer-Instruc+on:

An interac+ve learning strategy

How to promote student conceptual reasoning in your course

Sahana Murthy
IDP in Educa+onal Technology
Indian Ins+tute of Technology Bombay
February 27, 2014

This presenta+on is released under Crea+ve Commons-ALribu+on 4.0 License.

You are free to use, distribute and modify it , including for commercial purposes,
provided you acknowledge the source.

Challenges and Best Prac+ces

What are some challenges you might face

Your concerns?

Challenges you might face

REPORTED CHALLENGES

RECOMMENDED STRATEGIES

The class is too quiet.

Be pa+ent students reluctance to

discuss improves aZer 3-4 itera+ons
Do solo vote, allow enough +me

The class is too noisy.

Thats ok, this is good noise. Most

students are seen to be on task.

Some students just may not

par+cipate.

Explain why you are doing this, use

challenging & interes+ng ques+ons,
let them be

Students may not know how to This is not quite true provided
reason.
ques+ons are designed well
The class will get chao+c. How Use a cue such as a bell
do I get students back?

Best Prac+ces
On Wri'ng Ques'ons
Recommended ques+ons requiring conceptual reasoning (verbal,
logical, diagramma+c)
Avoid ques+ons involving number crunching (but can use PI to
precede a numerical problem, for ex )
Recommend Mix it up.
WHY: dierent pedagogical goals : bringing out a misconcep+on, predic+ng
an outcome, recall point from last class
WHAT: dierent types of ques+ons: survey, representa+ons, reasoning, Y/N
WHEN: at a variety of points during class (beginning / middle / end)

Avoid - ques+ons that can be answered by memoriza+on (unless

thats your goal, then use sparingly).

Best Prac+ces
On Facilita'ng Peer-Instruc'on
DONT SKIP ON PEER DISCUSSION (if single vote, only aZer group talk)
FOCUS ON REASONING NOT ON RIGHT ANSWER.
Withhold judgment. Do not give rapid rewards (nodding in assent)
Discuss reasons for right and wrong answers
Ask mul+ple students to give answers.

TIME. Recommended 2-5 minutes per ques+on.

FREQUENCY. Recommended a few per class, 2-4. (Some
instructors for ex Eric Mazur en+rely use PI, no lectures).
CREDIT. Do not assign heavy credit for right / wrong answers. Some
instructors (with clickers) assign a whi of credit for par+cipa+on.
I like to circulate, listen to student reasoning, give individual aLen+on

Important good prac+ce

Applicable for all ac+ve learning strategies
GET STUDENT BUY-IN.
Create it by explaining why you are doing this.
BeLer s+ll demonstrate why you are doing this.

Plenty of resources
Peer-instruc+on How-tos, workshop slides, videos, research
Carl Wieman Science Educa+on Ins+tute
hLp://www.cwsei.ubc.ca/resources/clickers.htm
and host of links from within

Instructors in many disciplines have posted peer-instruc+on
ques+ons for their courses physics, CS, Sta+s+cs use Google
(search with varied nomenclature PI, clickers, PRS)
BUT
We need to create a library of ques+ons for our courses, report
experiences in our context.
Please par+cipate!