So after almost a year of being a homedad I’m now going back to work a few days a week as a research assistant on an interesting and fun project back in the School of Philosophy and Bioethics in the Arts Faculty at Monash University.

Peer Instruction (PI) is an innovative technique for generating active learning in medium to large enrolment lecture classes. Briefly, the method works in the following way. After lecturing on a topic for 15-20 minutes, the lecturer ask a series of multiple-choice quiz questions that test students’ understanding of the topic under discussion. Everyone in the class then votes on the answer to the question. Students are then given the opportunity to discuss the question with other students in the class and another vote is taken. Once most students in the class have the right answer, the lecturer can confirm it and moves on, or if necessary, go back and explain the topic again.

Research on the use of PI in science teaching indicates that it can significantly improve students’ conceptual understanding and ability to solve quantitative problems. However its potential in the humanities remains largely untapped. Given the importance of conceptual understanding and critical engagement in many humanities disciplines, it is clear that the PI method has enormous potential in this context.

In other projects we have begun exploring the effectiveness of PI in several first year Philosophy units. The aim of this project is to expand and evaluate the use of PI in philosophy teaching at Monash and encourage its adoption elsewhere. The eventual outcome may be the widespread use of a better teaching method, benefiting both students and the university.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.