Peer Instruction

One problem with conventional teaching lies in the presentation of the material. Frequently, it comes straight out of textbooks and/or lecture notes, giving students little incentive to attend class. That the traditional presentation is nearly always delivered as a monologue in front of a passive audience compounds the problem. Only exceptional lecturers are capable of holding students' attention for an entire lecture period. It is even more difficult to provide adequate opportunity for students to critically think through the arguments being developed. Consequently, lectures simply reinforce students' feelings that the most important step in mastering the material is memorizing a zoo of apparently unrelated examples. In order to address these misconceptions about learning, we developed a method, Peer Instruction, which involves students in their own learning during lecture and focuses their attention on underlying concepts. Lectures are interspersed with conceptual questions, called ConcepTests, designed to expose common difficulties in understanding the material. The students are given one to two minutes to think about the question and formulate their own answers; they then spend two to three minutes discussing their answers in groups of three to four, attempting to reach consensus on the correct answer. This process forces the students to think through the arguments being developed, and enables them (as well as the instructor) to assess their understanding of the concepts even before they leave the classroom. We have taught two different levels of introductory physics at Harvard using this strategy and have found that students make significant gains in conceptual understanding (as measured by standardized tests) as well as gaining problem solving skills comparable to those acquired in traditionally taught classes. Dozens of instructors at other institutions have implemented Peer Instruction with their own students and found similar results. Peer Instruction is easy to implement in almost any subject and class. It doesn't require retooling of entire courses or curricula, or significant expenditures of time or money. All that is required is a collection of ConcepTests (available on Project Galileo) and a willingness to spend some of class time on student discussion.
Confessions of a converted lecturer: From Teaching by Telling to Learning from Peers, at Active Learning Summit, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, Thursday, February 15, 2024:
Education is more than just transfer of information, yet in many classes, instructors mostly present material. Few students have the ability, motivation, and discipline to synthesize all the information presented. Yet synthesis is perhaps the most important—and most elusive—aspect of education. I will show how shifting the focus in lectures from delivering information to synthesizing information greatly improves the learning that takes place in the classroom.
Confessions of a Converted Lecturer: From Teaching by Telling to Learning from One's Peers, at Active Learning Summit 2024, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, Thursday, February 15, 2024
I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material. Who was to blame? The students? The material? I will explain how I came to the agonizing conclusion that the culprit was neither of these. It was my teaching that caused students to fail! I will show how I have adjusted my approach to teaching and how it has improved my students' performance significantly
Confessions of a converted lecturer: Teaching as Telling or Teaching as Questioning?, at Teaching Academy, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, Friday, February 2, 2024:
Education is more than just transfer of information, yet in many classes, instructors mostly present material. Few students have the ability, motivation, and discipline to synthesize all the information presented. Yet synthesis is perhaps the most important—and most elusive—aspect of education. I will show how shifting the focus in lectures from delivering information to synthesizing information greatly improves the learning that takes place in the classroom.
Designing questions for student-centered learning, at AMISA 2024 Educators' Conference, American School of Asuncion, Asuncion, Paraguay, Thursday, March 21, 2024:

Questions are the heart of evaluating and engaging students. In this workshop, we will work individually and in pairs on a case study to learn best practices for developing effective questions.

After participating in this workshop, participants will be able to
  • Evaluate questions and classify them according the levels of Bloom’s taxonomy
  • Revise questions to increase the level of Bloom’s taxonomy at which they engage students
  • Develop questions that more effectively engage students in a flipped-learning environment
... Read more about Designing questions for student-centered learning
Student-centered learning with Perusall, at AMISA 2024 Educators' Conference, American School of Asuncion, Asuncion, Paraguay, Wednesday, March 20, 2024:

Learning is a social experience — it requires interactivity. Most students learn best by engaging with content, reflecting on it, and engaging with their peers. Moving pre-class reading assignments to an asynchronous and self-paced environment improves completion rates of these assignments. Perusall, a free social learning platform, permits one to move online the information-transfer that normally takes place in a lecture and make this information transfer interactive. In addition, the platform promotes intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to learn. In this workshop we will demonstrate the...

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Innovating education to educate innovators, at AMISA 2024 Educators' Conference, American School of Asuncion, Asuncion, Paraguay, Wednesday, March 20, 2024:
Can we teach innovation? Innovation requires whole-brain thinking — right-brain thinking for creativity and imagination, and left-brain thinking for planning and execution. Our current approach to education in science and technology, focuses on the transfer of information, developing mostly right-brain thinking by stressing copying and reproducing existing ideas rather than generating new ones. I will show how shifting the focus in lectures from delivering information to team work and creative thinking greatly improves the learning that takes place in the classroom and help develop problem-... Read more about Innovating education to educate innovators
Peer Instruction, at Innovation in Teaching — Harvard Business Publishing; Curso Santander (online), Wednesday, January 10, 2024:
The basic goals of Peer Instruction are to encourage and make use of student interaction during lectures, while focusing students' attention on underlying concepts and techniques. The method has been assessed in many studies using standardized, diagnostic tests and shown to be considerably more effective than the conventional lecture approach to teaching. Peer Instruction is now used in a wide range of disciplines at the college and secondary level. In this interactive workshop, participants will learn about Peer Instruction, serve as the "class" in which Peer Instruction is demonstrated,... Read more about Peer Instruction
Turning a large lecture into a seminar: Using Peer Instruction to Promote Deep Understanding, at Student Education Conference 2022, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, Thursday, January 6, 2022:
I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material. Who was to blame? The students? The material? I will explain how I came to the agonizing conclusion that the culprit was neither of these. It was my teaching that caused students to fail! I will show how I have adjusted my approach to teaching and how it has significantly improved my students' performance.
Peer Instruction in STEM Teaching, at Aalto University, Espoo, Finland, Wednesday, December 8, 2021
Education is more than just transfer of information, yet that is what is mostly done in large introductory courses -- instructors present material (even though this material might be readily available in printed form) and for students the main purpose of lectures is to take down as many notes as they can. Few students have the ability, motivation, and discipline to synthesize all the information delivered to them. Yet synthesis is perhaps the most important -- and most elusive -- aspect of education. I will show how shifting the focus in lectures from delivering information to synthesizing... Read more about Peer Instruction in STEM Teaching
Innovating educators to educate innovators, at Apertura Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, Concepción, Chile, Thursday, May 6, 2021:

Can we teach innovation? Innovation requires whole-brain thinking — right-brain thinking for creativity and imagination, and left-brain thinking for planning and execution. Our current approach to education in science and technology, focuses on the transfer of information, developing mostly right-brain thinking by stressing copying and reproducing existing ideas rather than generating new ones. I will show how shifting the focus in lectures from delivering information to team work and creative thinking greatly improves the learning that takes place in the classroom and promotes...

Read more about Innovating educators to educate innovators
Transform your teaching using Perusall, at Webinar, Monday, April 5, 2021:

Learning is a social experience — it requires interactions and interactivity. The coronavirus pandemic has been a good opportunity to rethink our approach to teaching. Moving some tasks to an online format suggests that many activities that have traditionally been synchronous and instructor-paced, can be made asynchronous and self-paced. Through Perusall, Eric Mazur, Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University, will demonstrate how to move information transfer and sense-making...

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Designing effective questions for Peer Instruction and formative assessment, at Faculty Development Workshop, Touro College, New York, NY, Friday, April 23, 2021:
The basic goals of Peer Instruction are to encourage and make use of student interaction during classes, while focusing students' attention on underlying concepts and techniques. The method centers around asking interactive questions, called ConcepTests, that help students build understanding. In this workshop, participants will learn how to design good ConcepTests.
Keynote: Twilight of the Lecture: Peer Instruction for Active Learning, at Faculty Development Workshop, Touro College, New York, NY, Friday, April 23, 2021:

Education is more than just transfer of information, yet that is what is mostly done in large introductory courses -- instructors present material (even though this material might be readily available in printed form) and for students the main purpose of lectures is to take down as many notes as they can. Few students have the ability, motivation, and discipline to synthesize all the information delivered to them. Yet synthesis is perhaps the most important -- and most elusive -- aspect of education. I will show how shifting the focus in lectures from delivering information to...

Read more about Keynote: Twilight of the Lecture: Peer Instruction for Active Learning

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