Can Peer Instruction in Calculus Improve Student Learning?

We report on an experiment in which we used Peer Instruction instead of traditional lectures in a Calculus course for beginning engineering students at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. In order to enable evaluation in a controlled experiment setting, we kept the rest of the course – text book, tutorials and examination – unchanged. The student’s pre-knowledge was measured by a diagnostic test, and their post-knowledge was measured by the written exam of the course. Our data indicate that the Peer Instruction group learned more than the control group, who had traditional lectures. In questionnaires at the beginning of the course and at the end, we asked for the students’ perceptions of Peer Instruction as teaching method and if they had found it useful as a tool for learning calculus. The answers show that the students appreciated being more active and motivated with Peer Instruction, but also that they found the method challenging and somewhat frustrating. A major problem was that the textbook was difficult to read in advance.

Proceedings of the 9th International CDIO Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 9 – 13, 2013.