The relationship between students' use of PeerWise, an online tool that facilitates peer learning through student-generated content in the form of multiple-choice questions (MCQs), and achievement, as measured by their performance in the end-of-module examinations, was investigated in 5 large early-years science modules (in physics, chemistry and biology) across 3 research-intensive UK universities. A complex pattern was observed in terms of which type of activity (writing, answering or commenting on questions) was most beneficial for students; however, there was some evidence that students of lower intermediate ability may have gained particular benefit. In all modules, a modest but statistically significant positive correlation was found between students' PeerWise activity and their examination performance, after taking prior ability into account. This suggests that engaging with the production and discussion of student-generated content in the form of MCQs can support student learning in a way that is not critically dependent on course, institution, instructor or student.

Students can create high quality assessment questions.

Categorizing student discussions during Peer Instruction based on a resources perspective of learning.

We present results of a pseudolongitudinal study of attitudes and beliefs about physics from different cohort groups ranging from final-year high school students in the UK to physics faculty ($N=637$), using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) instrument. In terms of overall degree of expertlike thinking, we find little change in cohorts at different stages of their undergraduate degrees, with a flat profile of expertlike thinking across the years of an undergraduate degree. Significant differences in overall CLASS scores occur for cohorts across entry and exit points of the undergraduate program. At the entry boundary, our data for high school students provides strong evidence of a selection effect, with students who intend to major in physics at university displaying more expertlike views than those students who are merely studying the subject to final year in high school. A similar effect is suggested at the exit boundary but is not definitive.

Interactive engagement activities are increasingly common in undergraduate physics teaching. As research efforts move beyond simply showing that interactive engagement pedagogies work towards developing an understanding of how they lead to improved learning outcomes, a detailed analysis of the way in which these activities are used in practice is needed. Our aim in this paper is to present a characterization of the type and duration of interactions, as experienced by students, that took place during two introductory physics courses (1A and 1B) at a university in the United Kingdom. Through this work, a simple framework for analyzing lectures—the framework for interactive learning in lectures (FILL), which focuses on student interactions (with the lecturer, with each other, and with the material) is proposed. The pedagogical approach is based on Peer Instruction (PI) and both courses are taught by the same lecturer. We find lecture activities can be categorized into three types: interactive (25%), vicarious interactive (20%) (involving questions to and from the lecturer), and noninteractive (55%). As expected, the majority of both interactive and vicarious interactive activities took place during PI. However, the way that interactive activities were used during non-PI sections of the lecture varied significantly between the two courses. Differences were also found in the average time spent on lecturer-student interactions (28% for 1A and 12% for 1B), although not on student-student interactions (12% and 12%) or on individual learning (10% and 7%). These results are explored in detail and the implications for future research are discussed.

According to dual processing theory there are two types, or modes, of thinking: system 1, which involves intuitive and nonreflective thinking, and system 2, which is more deliberate and requires conscious effort and thought. The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a widely used and robust three item instrument that measures the tendency to override system 1 thinking and to engage in reflective, system 2 thinking. Each item on the CRT has an intuitive (but wrong) answer that must be rejected in order to answer the item correctly. We therefore hypothesized that performance on the CRT may give useful insights into the cognitive processes involved in learning physics, where success involves rejecting the common, intuitive ideas about the world (often called misconceptions) and instead carefully applying physical concepts. This paper presents initial results from an ongoing study examining the relationship between students’ CRT scores and their performance on the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), which tests students’ understanding of Newtonian mechanics. We find that a higher CRT score predicts a higher FCI score for both precourse and postcourse tests. However, we also find that the FCI normalized gain is independent of CRT score. The implications of these results are discussed.