Many of us, regardless of our disciplines, recognize Mazur’s frustration with students’ focus on “recipes.” In a funny and bracingly honest video, Eric Mazur discusses how and why he dramatically changed his approach to teaching. Mazur had come to think of himself as a star in Harvard’s physics classrooms - his students gave him high evaluations and solved difficult equations on tests. Then one day, he posed a simple, word-based problem that asked students to explain a basic concept. He found the results appalling.
Mazur’s response to his students’ surprising befuddlement is an approach he calls peer instruction. In explaining his rationale for this kind of teaching, he argues that learning involves two phases - the transfer of knowledge and an opportunity for students to makes sense of that new knowledge, to have “ah-hah moments.” Mazur suggests moving some of the basic transfer of knowledge outside the class and allowing peer instruction to create opportunities for ah[1]hah moments. Here are the steps:
1. Pose a question that requires problem solving or critical thinking.
2. Have students think about the question independently for a minute or two and then use their phones or clickers to respond. (Set the polling system so students don’t see the distribution of answers.)
3. Ask students to explain their answer to a neighbor, ideally one who chose a different answer.
4. Repoll. (In Mazur’s experience, students often move to correct answers.)
5. Lead a brief discussion of the problem, calling on a few students to explain their thinking, and then reveal the correct answer.
Want to learn more?
In a 14-minute video, Mazur explains why he devised peer instruction and how it works.
This 8-minute video focuses on students’ interactions during peer instruction.
This short article’s description of useful polling tools includes three that work quite well for peer instruction: Socrative, Kahoot! and PollEverywhere.
Submitted by:
Center for Teaching and Learning
University of the Incarnate Word
