Technology for Peer Instruction

The Interactive Learning Toolkit (ILT) is a tool to implement innovative teaching ideas such as Peer Instruction and Just in Time Teaching, and to monitor students’ learning. It incorporates a large Concept Test (CT) database and provides the opportunity to easily integrate CTs into lectures. This talk will discuss the integration of the content management of the ILT with the Interactive Classroom features of BQ, a software developed at Erskine College. Student responses using IR clickers, wireless laptops, PDAs and cell phones are combined to give the instructor immediate feedback on student understanding . The ILT provides a statistical analysis of all student responses as well as of individual student data. The first step of the integration has been tested in a large introductory physics course at Harvard University. Results of this test are presented and future integration steps will be discussed.