Prof. Eric Mazur - Peer Methodology Thumbnail (multimedia)

I attend a large institution and have been enrolled in several large lecture classes. As the weeks go on, fewer students attend these classes simply because the material isn’t engaging. When professors just lecture for an hour, there is no opportunity for students to use critical thinking skills and be actively engaged in the lecture.

The question that Professor Mazur puts on the board at 1:07 is the ideal type of question, especially for a large lecture class studying physics. There is a paragraph in the beginning (with a large font size) where the first sentence explains the situation, and the second sentence actually asks the question. There is an image underneath for those who are more visual learners, and then four answers that really make a student think because essentially there are only two choices: net force and net torque. Including a net force and a net torque or neither a net force nor a net torque really forces the students to think and contemplate even more about their answer.

As you see at 1:21, the use of an IClickr to answer the questions Mazur gives displays the use of technology for feedback. Each year, I see more and more professors converting to new technologies in order to make student feedback simpler. This process is easy for Mazur as well with the feedback results graph that is shown at 1:25. Technology allows the results to automatically be transformed into a graph, making it easier on Mazur’s part to decipher the responses in the class.

Including questions during class lectures really creates collaboration among the students. When students disagree on an answer, or when neither of the students are confident in their answers, debate arises, which is healthy in a college lecture hall environment. The more students engage with each other, the more they learn from each other. Student don’t have to just learn from the professor, but can learn equally as much form their peer sitting right next to them.

For many of my classes, it is a requirement to read the chapter and lecture notes online before class in order to be prepared. I think this is critical to the learning process because if you go to class with no idea what the lecture is on, you won’t have any idea what the professor is talking about – especially with material as complex as physics. In one of my classes last semester we had daily “mini-speeches.” The professor would pull a name from a hat randomly and we would have to answer the questions he gave, and he would grade our responses out of 20 points. We had three of these throughout the semester so you never knew when you would be called. It forced me to read and be prepared before class. Reminds me of this approach.

Recent research has indicated that the cognitive process of recalling information for a test is often the most effective way to achieve true understanding. Constantly testing and recalling information during a lecture sounds like a fantastic way to learn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/science/21memory.html?_r=1

the way I prefer is for professor to lecture first and make the second half of class a Q&A session.