Technology is not a pedagogy: Peer Instruction with and without clickers

Peer Instruction is an instructional strategy for engaging students during class using a structured questioning process. Results from a wide variety of institutions indicate that Peer Instruction increases student mastery of conceptual reasoning and quantitative problem solving and decreases attrition rates. The technique is most frequently implemented with clickers, even though flashcards or raised hands can also be used. We recently studied the effect of clickers on the implementation of Peer Instruction and found that the benefits result more from the pedagogy than from the clicker technology alone.