Chris Whittaker

When Talking Is Better Than Staying Quiet

The effectiveness of Peer Instruction is often associated to the importance of in‐class discussions between peers. Typically, a greater number of students have correct answers after peer discussions. However, other cognitive and metacognitive processes such as reflection or time‐on‐task may also explain this increase because students answering conceptual questions reflect more and spend more time thinking about their understanding. An identical sequence of conceptual questions was given to three groups of students. All groups were polled twice on each question. Between polls, students were asked either to discuss their choice with a peer, or to reflect for a minute (no discussion), or were given a distraction task (sequence of cartoons: no discussion and no reflection). Increases in the rates of correct answers between the first and the second poll were found across all conditions. The ‘Distract’ condition had a small but positive increase (3.4%). The ‘Reflect’ condition had a greater increase (9.7%) while the ‘Discuss’ condition had the greatest (21.0%). All conditions showed gains, possibly because of ‘testing effects’, though peer‐discussions clearly yield greatest increases. Our findings show that learning gains through peer discussions cannot be explained only by additional time‐on‐task or self‐reflection.

Effective variations of peer instruction: The effects of peer discussions, committing to an answer, and reaching a consensus

Peer Instruction (PI) is a widely used student-centered pedagogy, but one that is used differently by different instructors. While all PI instructors survey their students with conceptual questions, some do not allow students to discuss with peers. We studied the effect of peer discussion by polling three groups of students (N = 86) twice on the same set of nine conceptual questions. The three groups differed in the tasks assigned between the first and second poll: the first group discussed, the second reflected in silence, and the third was distracted so they could neither reflect nor discuss. Comparing score changes between the first and second poll, we find minimal increases in the distraction condition (3%), sizable increases in the reflection condition (10%), and significantly larger increases in the peer discussion condition (21%). We also examined the effect of committing to an answer before peer discussion and reaching a consensus afterward. We compared a lecture-based control section to three var...