Clicker Pedagogy Article Series

Traditional university classes are presented as a mono-logue in front of a passive audience. Experience and research indicates that this compounds the common problem of low levels of student learning; students miss the opportunity to think critically and to problem solve. This classroom situation can reinforce students ’ feel-ings that the most important step in mastering course material is memorizing, rather than striving for a deep understanding of core concepts. In order to prevent stu-dent reliance on memorizing and as a result increase student learning and develop critical think skills a peda-gogical strategy is to implement peer instruction into your class. Peer instruction actively engages the stu-dents in the learning process and focuses their attention on underlying concepts. In a peer instruction approach