research-article

Peer instruction: do students really learn from peer discussion in computing?

Authors:

Cynthia Bailey Lee,

Daniel ZingaroAuthors Info & Claims

ICER '11: Proceedings of the seventh international workshop on Computing education research

Pages 45 - 52

https://doi.org/10.1145/2016911.2016923

Published: 08 August 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Peer Instruction (PI) is an instructional approach that engages students in constructing their own understanding of concepts. Students individually respond to a question, discuss with peers, and respond to the same question again. In general, the peer discussion portion of PI leads to an increase in the number of students answering a question correctly. But are these students really learning, or are they just "copying" the right answer from someone in their group? In an article in the journal Science, Smith et al. affirm that genetics students individually learn from discussion: having discussed a first question with their peers, students are better able to correctly, individually answer a second, conceptually-related question. We replicate their study, finding that students in upper-division computing courses (architecture and theory of computation) also learn from peer discussions, and explore differences between our results and those of Smith et al. Our work reveals that using raw percentage gains between paired questions may not fully illuminate the value of peer discussion. We define a new metric, Weighted Learning Gain, which better reflects the learning value of discussion. By applying this metric to both genetics and computing courses, we consistently find that 85-89% of "potential learners" benefit from peer discussion.

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Cited By

Ospanbekov YMaxutov SSandybayev YBoranbekova ABalta N(2024)Peer instruction’s Achilles’ heel: An analysis of its ineffectiveness in confronting counterintuitive physics questionsEurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education10.29333/ejmste/1477820:8(em2480)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/14778
Fowler MSmith DZilles CMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Quickly Producing "Isomorphic" Exercises: Quantifying the Impact of Programming Question PermutationsProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653617(178-184)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653617
Shah AAgarwal VGriswold WPorter LSoosai Raj AMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)In-Person vs Blended Learning: An Examination of Grades, Attendance, Peer Support, Competitiveness, and BelongingProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653604(422-428)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653604
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Index Terms

Peer instruction: do students really learn from peer discussion in computing?
1. Applied computing
  1. Education
    1. Collaborative learning
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ICER '11: Proceedings of the seventh international workshop on Computing education research

August 2011

156 pages

ISBN:9781450308298

DOI:10.1145/2016911

General Chair:
Kate Sanders
Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Michael E. Caspersen
University of Aarhus, Denmark
,
Alison Clear
Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, Christchurch, New Zealand
,
Kate Sanders
Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 08 August 2011

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ICER '11

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SIGCSE

ICER '11: International Computing Education Research Workshop

August 8 - 9, 2011

Rhode Island, Providence, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 189 of 803 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

Ospanbekov YMaxutov SSandybayev YBoranbekova ABalta N(2024)Peer instruction’s Achilles’ heel: An analysis of its ineffectiveness in confronting counterintuitive physics questionsEurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education10.29333/ejmste/1477820:8(em2480)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/14778
Fowler MSmith DZilles CMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Quickly Producing "Isomorphic" Exercises: Quantifying the Impact of Programming Question PermutationsProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653617(178-184)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653617
Shah AAgarwal VGriswold WPorter LSoosai Raj AMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)In-Person vs Blended Learning: An Examination of Grades, Attendance, Peer Support, Competitiveness, and BelongingProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653604(422-428)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653604
Shah AAlhumrani FGriswold WPorter LSoosai Raj AMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)A Comparison of Student Behavioral Engagement in Traditional Live Coding and Active Live Coding LecturesProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653537(513-519)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653537
de Oliveira Neto FDobslaw FRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey MGama KSiegmund J(2024)Building Collaborative Learning: Exploring Social Annotation in Introductory ProgrammingProceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3639474.3640063(12-21)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639474.3640063
Selva MBroquedis FStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Mining Jewels Together: Debating about Programming Threshold Concepts in Large ClassesProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630893(1189-1195)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
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Akhmetov IAhmed SAyuno KStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)How We Manage an Army of Teaching Assistants: Experience Report on Scaling a CS1 CourseProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630871(32-38)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626252.3630871
Griswold WStephenson BStone JBattestilli LRebelsky SShoop L(2024)Experience Report: Meet the Professor - A Large-Course Intervention for Increasing RapportProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630844(415-421)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
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Elford DJones GLancaster S(2024)Augmented reality meets Peer instructionChemistry Education Research and Practice10.1039/D3RP00093A25:3(833-842)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1039/D3RP00093A
Pitterson N(2023)Teaching Complex Introductory Concepts in a Sophomore Circuits Course: A Descriptive Case StudyEducation Sciences10.3390/educsci1310102213:10(1022)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2023
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