USE OF CONCEPTESTS IN A LARGE LECTURE COURSE TO PROVIDE ACTIVE STUDENT INVOLVEMENT AND PEER TEACHING

The purpose of this project was to evaluate the use of Conceptests. Co nceptests are used to activate specific misconceptions and cause stude nts to feel uncomfortable with their previous ideas following a lectur e addressing the concept. This discomfort is the driving force behind the student's construction of new knowledge. The Conceptest wi II eval uate the ability of the student to transfer knowledge rather than memo rize methods. Through the use of the Conceptest, not only do the stude nts benefit, but also the instructor learns how to more effectively te ach concepts to the students. Two or three Conceptests were presented as a part of each one-hour lecture. The students were given a multiple -choice Conceptest and were asked to choose an answer and evaluate the certainty of their response on a scale of one to five. Following fift een to twenty minutes of lecture, the students were again asked to ans wer the question and evaluate their confidence in their answer. Then t he students were asked to talk with their classmates for one minute ab out the question and provide a third answer with a level of confidence in their answer. The student outcomes for this exercise are: (i) an a ctive role for each student following every fifteen minutes of lecture ; and (ii) empathic peer instruction to complement the instructor's ex pertise. The project implications are : (i) immediate feedback is prov ided to the instructor with regard to how the lecture is being receive d; and (ii) an objective means is provided to determine when principle s are not being correctly applied to new situations.