Participants will experience, learn, and practice Peer Instruction, a research-based pedagogy that promotes active engagement and student-centered learning through technology integration. After experiencing PI using an interactive student response tool, participants will reflect on how this pedagogy could be used within the context of their own classrooms.
Peer Instruction (PI) engages students and transforms traditional lecture-based knowledge acquisition by creating an interactive, student-centered learning environment that allows students to practice higher-order thinking. PI is a pedagogy of engagement that challenges students to retrieve previously learned information, apply it to a complex problem or question, discuss their ideas and answers with peers, rethink their original answers, and answer again. The Peer Instruction teaching method has been highly tested in high school and university-level science classes. Championed by Harvard Physics Professor, Eric Mazur, Peer Instruction is currently practiced at high schools, colleges and universities across the country, including in the University of Texas at Austin’s innovative OnRamps Dual-Enrollment Physics, Chemistry, and Geoscience courses. In this workshop, participants will learn PI best practices from OnRamps staff who are experts in this pedagogy.
For further information regarding the value of Peer Instruction see -
Crouch, Catherine H., and Eric Mazur. "Peer instruction: Ten years of experience and results." American journal of physics 69.9 (2001): 970-977.
Fagen, Adam P., Catherine H. Crouch, and Eric Mazur. "Peer instruction: Results from a range of classrooms." The Physics Teacher 40.4 (2002): 206-209.
Crouch, Catherine H., et al. "Peer instruction: Engaging students one-on-one, all at once." Research-based reform of university physics 1.1 (2007): 40-95.