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The Physics Suite: Peer Instruction Problems
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Peer Instruction Problems:
Introduction to the Method
Making Your Lecture More Interactive
The Peer Instruction technique is a method created by Eric Mazur to help make lectures more interactive and to get students intellectually engaged with what is going on.
In this method,
- The instructor presents students with a qualitative (usually multiple choice) question that is carefully constructed to engage student difficulties with fundamental concepts.
- The students consider the problem on their own and contribute their answers in a way that the fraction of the class giving each answer can be determined and reported.
- Students then discuss the issue with their neighbors for two minutes and vote again.
- The issues are resolved with a class discussion and clarifications.
This method, besides having the advantage of engaging the student and making the lecture more interesting to the student, has the tremendous importance of giving the instructor significant feedback about where the class is and what it knows. To often, we use the "union of knowledge principle" -- if any student in the class knows something, we assume the whole class knows it. The response system gives us much better information about the distribution of knowledge among our students. This method also offers significant opportunity for engaging the students in discussions of reasoning and epistemology (how we decide which answers are right and under what circumstances the answers hold).
For more information, see
Ways of Collecting Student Responses
You can collect student responses in a variety of ways.
Electronic Remote Answering Devices (RADs) are now conveniently and cheaply available.
- The electronic Personal Response System from EdCue requires special hand-held electronic remote-control devices for every student and a receiver system.
- We have used this system at the University of Maryland and found it effective for up to about 150 or 200 students.
- The Classroom Performance System (CPS) from eInstruction has infrared and RF connections. This system can handle up to 1000 inputs quickly and works for both Mac and PC.
- Turning
Point Technologies has a variety of systems including IR and RF.
- The
RF system is faster than the typical IR systems and does not have
the bandwidth problem (student requests to register blocking each other
out).
- This works directly inside of PowerPoint and provides
the student with verification on their RAD instead of using the display
screen to verify.
Students can be given a point for participating in order
to encourage them to come to class and to not lose their electronic RADs.
But it is important that students reach for their intuitive answers, rather
than the answers that they think the professor wants or that is the "right" or "scientific" answer.
They won't do this if their answers are graded.
You don't need to go high-tech, however. Another way was suggested by Tom Moore (Pomona) and studied by D. Meltzer and K. Manivannan (The Physics Teacher 34 (1996) 72.)
- Provide each student with a set of different colored cards (about 8.5 x 11 inches) with a set of numbers on them. Each student shares his or her answer by choosing a card and holding it up. The approximate proportion of each answer can be easily seen by all.
Although this method is much cheaper and easier to implement than the electronic
one, it has the drawback that student answers are not anonymous to the rest of
the class and they cannot be easily recorded for grading or later analysis.
We present here a collection of problems appropriate to use in lecture in conjunction
with the Peer Instruction Method. The problems are annotated with a few sentences
describing their use and our experience with them.
Some of the problems in this collection are not multiple choice. In this case, the instructor should allow students to suggest a range of answers and number them before having the class vote.
The problems in the collection are stored as PDF and as DOC files.
- The PDF files: These are to make it easy for you to use the questions as is. Simply print them out on an overhead to use them in your class. (To get a PDF reader, jump to the Adobe Website and download at no charge.)
- The DOC files: These are to permit you to modify the question to meet your needs. These files are in Microsoft Word format.
Problems are arranged by subject. (When this site is finished, you will also
be able to view these problems arranged to match the Physics Suite's text, Understanding Physics chapter
by chapter.)
Other Websites with Appropriate Problems
- Galileo -- Eric Mazur's website at Harvard has an excellent collection of problems, unfortunately not formatted for direct and easy printing. You have to register to gain access.
If you learn of other websites with good collections of Peer Instruction problems, please send them to redish@umd.edu and I will add them to this list.
Work
supported in part by a grant from the US National Science Foundation.
Maintained by Edward F. Redish
Comments and questions may be directed to
redish@umd.edu
Page last modified
August 27, 2006