Internet Learning Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2014 | Page 59

Internet Learning encourages students and to either defend their answer or to convince them that their own response is correct. 7. Students submit second-round responses after discussion. 8. Instructor reviews second-round feedback using the Learning Catalytics dashboard. 9. Instructor guides a closure activity for explaining the correct answer. Instructors elicit misconceptions in steps 1-4, confront those misconceptions in steps 5-7, and resolve those misconceptions in steps 8-9. (If too few or too many students answer correctly in the first round, then there may be no significant misconceptions, and the process would jump from step 5 to step 9.) By building on students’ prior knowledge derived from pre-class reading assignments submitted online and engaging them in constant social learning opportunities, Peer Instruction qualifies as a leading, internationally recognized interactive, web-facilitated teaching method. Indeed, in a study of 722 physics professors, Henderson and Dancy (2010) found that Peer Instruction was the most well-known and most tried interactive teaching method, with “more than 64% of respondents reporting familiarity” (p.1057). For over twenty years, studies in classrooms all over the globe consistently indicate that there are positive learning outcomes associated with Peer Instruction. Prominent research includes Fagen et al. (2002), which found from a study of 384 Peer Instruction users and 30 courses at 11 universities a positive correlation between Peer Instruction and increased scores on standardized assessments of conceptual understanding. Mazur (1997) reported that students performed better on both course-specific exams and standardized tests of conceptual understanding when taught using Peer Instruction instead of with the traditional method (see Mazur, 1997, p. 16). Smith et al. (2009) reported that in a Peer Instruction environment, “peer discussion enhances understanding, even when none of the students in a discussion group originally knows the correct answer.” Watkins (2010) reported that Peer Instruction is correlated with increased persistence (staying) in science majors and a reduction in the gender gap and the gap between racial and ethnic minorities on tests of conceptual understanding in physics. Despite its successes, there remain students in Peer Instruction and other constructivist-based, interactive, blended classrooms that do not achieve at the levels proponents of interactive teaching and blended learning hope for. In this study, we examine if we can predict students that are at-risk in blended Peer Instruction classrooms early, with the intention of using those early warning models to recommend early interventions to instructors utilizing Peer Instruction and other interactive teaching methods. In this study, we posit that pre-course self-efficacy may be one such non-content related early warning sign. Methods We studied N = 89 students in a medium-sized introductory physics course at a large private university in the Northeast taught using Peer Instruction and Just-in-Time Teaching by a highly experienced instructor. Most implementations of Peer Instruction facilitate the mechanics of responding to ConcepTests using clickers or other audience response systems; as aforementioned, the course we studied used Learning Catalytics, a cloud-based response system (developed 58