Case study evaluating Just-In-Time Teaching and Peer Instruction using clickers in a quantum mechanics course

Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) is an instructional strategy involving feedback from students on prelecture activities in order to design in-class activities to build on the continuing feedback from students. We investigate the effectiveness of a JiTT approach, which included in-class concept tests using clickers in an upper-division quantum mechanics course. We analyze student performance on prelecture reading quizzes, in-class clicker questions answered individually, and clicker questions answered after group discussion, and compare those performances with open-ended retention quizzes administered after all instructional activities on the same concepts. In general, compared to the reading quizzes, student performance improved when individual clicker questions were posed after lectures that focused on student difficulties found via electronic feedback. The performance on the clicker questions after group discussion following individual clicker question responses also showed improvement. We discuss some possible reasons for the improved performance at various stages, e.g., from prelecture reading quizzes to postlecture clicker questions, and from individual to group clicker questions.

Figure 1

Student performance on ICT vs RQ, averaged over all comparison questions. The difference between the means of the RQ and ICT scores is significant ($p=0.004$). Error bars are not shown on the plot for clarity; the average standard error was $\pm 6\%$ for the RQ and $\pm 8\%$ for the ICT.

Figure 2

Student performance on GCT vs ICT, averaged across all comparison questions ($p=0.009$). Error bars are not shown on the plot for clarity; the average standard error was $\pm 8\%$ for the ICT and $\pm 5\%$ for the GCT.

Figure 3

Student performance on OQ vs GCT, averaged across all comparison questions, with linear regression and corresponding Pearson correlation coefficient ($R^2=0.045$). Error bars are not shown on the plot for clarity; the average standard error was $\pm 5\%$ for the GCT and $\pm 0.03$ for the OQ.

Figure 4

Student performance on OQ vs RQ, averaged across all comparison questions, with linear regression and corresponding Pearson correlation coefficient ($R^2=0.039$). Error bars are not shown on the plot for clarity; the average standard error was $\pm 6\%$ for the RQ and $\pm 0.03$ for the OQ.

Figure 5

Average scores on the comparison questions for the ICT vs the RQ. Error bars are not shown for clarity; the average standard error was $\pm 8\%$ for the RQ and $\pm 7\%$ for the ICT.

Figure 6

Average scores on the comparison questions for the GCT vs the ICT. Error bars are not shown for clarity; the average standard error was $\pm 7\%$ for the ICT and $\pm 8\%$ for the GCT.

Figure 7

Average scores on the individual comparison questions for the OQ vs the GCT, with linear regression and corresponding Pearson correlation coefficient ($R^2=0.008$). Error bars are not shown for clarity; the average standard error was $\pm 8\%$ for the GCT and $\pm 0.03$ for the OQ.

Figure 8

Average scores on the individual comparison questions for the OQ vs the RQ, with linear regression and corresponding Pearson correlation coefficient ($R^2=0.015$). Error bars are not shown for clarity; the average standard error was $\pm 8\%$ for the RQ and $\pm 0.03$ for the OQ.

Figure 9

The number of times each student switched from a correct ICT response to an incorrect GCT response divided by the total number of correct ICT responses for that student ($\times 100\%$) vs each student’s self-efficacy score. The average standard error for S.E. score was $\pm 0.086$, and for percentage of correct ICT switched to incorrect GCT was $\pm 2.30\%$.

Figure 10

(GCT—ICT) for each week of instruction (averaged over all students and all questions for that week). The average standard error was $\pm 8.56\%$.

Figure 11

The $x$ axis denotes the number of times each student did not respond to an ICT divided by the number of ICT the student had the opportunity to answer $\times 100\%$; the $y$ axis denotes the number of times each student did not respond to a GCT divided by the number of GCT the student had the opportunity to answer $\times 100\%$ for each student. The average standard error for missed ICT percentage was $\pm 1.19\%$ and for missed GCT percentage was $\pm 1.36\%$.

Figure 12

Student nonresponse on ICT (blue) and GCT (red) as a percentage of total possible responses per week of instruction. The average standard error was $\pm 2.79\%$ for ICT and $\pm 3.86\%$ for GCT.