Why do it?

“Peer instruction is an instructional strategy that encourages students to verbalise their answer and selection rationale, actively listen to their peer’s rationale, and critically compare and contrast their explanations with those of others” (Peer Instruction & Think-pair-share, 2020). This strategy was developed by Eric Mazur, a Professor of Physics at Harvard University, who creates a flipped classroom setting and runs his lectures through questioning of key concepts and skills.

How to do it?

Adapted from https://lsa.umich.edu/technology-services/news-events/all-news/teaching-tip-of-the-week/peer-instruction-for-active-learning.html 

Peer Instruction generally involves the following steps:

1. The instructor poses a conceptual question; this is also called a “Concept Test” to probe students’ understanding on a topic just covered by lecture or pre-class reading. It works best with multiple choice questions, but it can also be used for short answer or extended response questions.

2. The instructor gives students one to two minutes to think, and then asks them to record their individual responses. This could be using fingers to show their MC response (1 for A, 2 for B, etc.) or it can be written down on paper or a mini-whiteboard, or using technology so teachers can collect and review responses.

3. The instructor asks the students to discuss the reasoning behind their responses with their neighbours and to explore any differences in their answers, or to find a student who gave a different multiple choice response. This peer discussion can last for two to ten minutes, and the teacher may find it useful to move around the room listening to the student discussion. 

4. Once discussion is completed, the instructor repeats the question and students answer the question again. They can choose to give a different response based on their discussion or keep their initial response if they believe it’s correct. 

5. From here, the teacher can choose to repeat steps 3 and 4 until the majority of students have the right answer.

Who can you ask?

Rachel Beagley