Presentations

In Peer Instruction, the instructor of a large lecture class periodically poses questions to the students; the students think about these questions individually and then discuss them in small groups. A student described this method as ""turning a large lecture into a seminar."" For Peer Instruction to be successful, the instructor needs a way to gauge the students' understanding of a particular question. Instructors around the country have used a show of hands, flash cards, and electronic techniques to learn students¹ answers. We will present our latest findings on the implementation of Peer... Read more about Gauging What Students Understand -- In Class

Should an instructor be discouraged when students say ""I'm confused""? This is a crucial issue for educational reform, because students often report feeling more confused when they are asked to think more for themselves. We report on an analysis of the relationship between perceived confusion and understanding in introductory physics. We asked 200 students during one semester to indicate what, if anything, they found difficult or confusing in their pre-class reading assignment and correlated their responses to answers they provided on questions on corresponding topics. Preliminary results... Read more about Confusion: Students' Perception vs. Reality