Response switching and self-efficacy in Peer Instruction classrooms

Peer Instruction, a well-known student-centered teaching method, engages students during class through structured, frequent questioning and is often facilitated by classroom response systems. The central feature of any Peer Instruction class is a conceptual question designed to help resolve student misconceptions about subject matter. We provide students two opportunities to answer each question—once after a round of individual reflection and then again after a discussion round with a peer. The second round provides students the choice to “switch” their original response to a different answer. The percentage of right answers typically increases after peer discussion: most students who answer incorrectly in the individual round switch to the correct answer after the peer discussion. However, for any given question there are also students who switch their initially right answer to a wrong answer and students who switch their initially wrong answer to a different wrong answer. In this study, we analyze response switching over one semester of an introductory electricity and magnetism course taught using Peer Instruction at Harvard University. Two key features emerge from our analysis: First, response switching correlates with academic self-efficacy. Students with low self-efficacy switch their responses more than students with high self-efficacy. Second, switching also correlates with the difficulty of the question; students switch to incorrect responses more often when the question is difficult. These findings indicate that instructors may need to provide greater support for difficult questions, such as supplying cues during lectures, increasing times for discussions, or ensuring effective pairing (such as having a student with one right answer in the pair). Additionally, the connection between response switching and self-efficacy motivates interventions to increase student self-efficacy at the beginning of the semester by helping students develop early mastery or to reduce stressful experiences (i.e., high-stakes testing) early in the semester, in the hope that this will improve student learning in Peer Instruction classrooms.

Figure 1

(a) Fraction of all responses that are switched (top left). (b) Fraction of all switched responses that are switched from wrong to right (top right). (c) Fraction of all switched responses that are switched from wrong to a different wrong (bottom left), and (d) fraction of all switched responses that are switched from right to a wrong (bottom right).

Figure 2

Fraction of all CT responses that each student switches from wrong to right plotted as a function of the number of questions the student answers incorrectly in round 1. Students 1 and 2 both switch approximately 50% of the questions they answer from wrong to right. These two students are not directly comparable, however, because student 1 has far fewer incorrect answers in round 1 than student 2. Normalizing with respect to the number of incorrect answers in round 1 allows us to compare these two students.

Figure 3

Average percent of questions switched in each of the three directions (wrong to right, right to wrong, wrong to different wrong) normalized with respect to the first response, for students with high and low self-efficacy

Figure 4

Average right-to-wrong switching (normalized) for students with different levels of agreement with the statements “I usually don’t worry about my ability to solve physics problems” (left) and “I can communicate science effectively” (right). No students strongly disagreed with the statement “I can communicate science effectively” and therefore this column is missing from the figure on the right.

Figure 5

Fraction of students who switch (in any of the three directions) plotted for each individual ConcepTest as a function of CT difficulty (obtained from a 2PL item response theory model).