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
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