An interesting little piece in Inside Higher Ed: Proving the benefits of peer instruction. Basically, a biology professor, Tin Tin Su, at the University of Colorado at Boulder started using “clicker” technology in her lecture hall classes to survey students throughout the lecture.
Her own use of the devices confirmed the conclusions of studies she’d read showing that students who answered in-class questions using clickers were more likely to answer a question correctly after they’d had a chance to discuss it among themselves and then revote. But those studies left her with a nagging doubt: “Is the percentage of correct answers going up because they’re really learning from each other, or because a neighbor says, ‘Oh, B’s the right answer,’ and they’re adopting that student’s answer?”
The short and watered-down answer is “yes,” students do actually learn from each other.
This is a conclusion that folks in fields like mine have assumed for a long time, but it is interesting that this has been “proved” in some fashion with a scientific study.
