Comparing the effectiveness of peer instruction to individual learning during a chromatography course

Abstract

Peer instruction has been recognized as an instructional method having a positive impact on learning compared to traditional lectures in science. This method has been widely supported by the socio-constructivist approach to learning giving a positive role to interaction between peers in the construction of knowledge. As far as we know, no study has been conducted from the socio-cognitive approach which suggests that individuals working alone perform better than those interacting with others in groups. Thus, the aim of the present study was to examine whether peer instruction improves learning when compared with an individual learning method that does not require any interaction with peers. After being randomly divided into either a peer instruction or an individual learning condition in a chromatography course, students had to answer to a series of multiple-choice questions using clickers at the beginning (pre-test) and end of (post-test) the session. Results revealed that the percentage of correct answers increased similarly from the pre-to the post-test in both conditions. Nevertheless, students perceived the peer instruction method as being more satisfying, engaging and useful than the individual learning method. The findings revealed that peer instruction provides subjective benefits, but failed to demonstrate a greater learning gain.

Uma revisão da literatura acerca da implementação da metodologia interativa de ensino Peer Instruction (1991 a 2015)

“…Devidoà ausência de testes padronizados para determinados conteúdos e disciplinas, uma parcela dos pesquisadores avalia a aprendizagem dos estudantes por meio da aplicação de testes construídos especialmente para sua pesquisa [40,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51].…”

“…A melhora na aprendizagem conceitual dos estudantes, medida com testes desenvolvidos pelos pesquisadores, também foi encontrada em cursos de Biologia [49], Matemática [40,45], Física [47,50] e Química [51]. Um resultado interessante foi obtido por Jones et al [49], que mostraram que o PI ampliou a capacidade de estudantes de um curso de Entomologia em aplicar o conhecimento conceitual a situações do mundo real.…”

“…Um resultado interessante foi obtido por Jones et al [49], que mostraram que o PI ampliou a capacidade de estudantes de um curso de Entomologia em aplicar o conhecimento conceitual a situações do mundo real. Em termos do desempenho dos estudantes nos testes aplicados, Pizer [45],Cox e Junkin [47], Zhu e Singh [50], Morice et al [51] e Ouko et al [40] dão evidências que os estudantes que tiveram aulas com o PI tendem a obter um escore superior na segunda aplicação do teste (pós-teste), em comparação com os escores de estudantes com aulas tradicionais.…”

Practice of Peer Instruction in Computer Experiment Courses

“…In addition, it also has some research on the development of PI [8][9] and the comparison of PI teaching strategy and other teaching methods [10]. However, PI has scarcely been used in computer experiment course.…”

Development of novel analytical methods for the study of ethnobotanical diabetes treatments and diabetes biomarkers

“…Our explicit goal was to make the resulting project best suited for the students by asking their peers to be highly involved in its preparation and optimization. Moreover, this process prepared the undergraduate researchers to ultimately become peer facilitators for the laboratory module implementation process because of their high familiarity with the developed material 110 .…”