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30 - A Case Study of Peer Instruction

From University of California, San Diego to the Computer Science Community

from Case Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2019

Sally A. Fincher
Affiliation:
University of Kent, Canterbury
Anthony V. Robins
Affiliation:
University of Otago, New Zealand
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Summary

This case study examines the adoption and study of Peer Instruction (PI) in computer science that began at UC San Diego in 2008. The faculty member who initially adopted PI had recently been a fellow at an interdisciplinary institute where she had already seen its effectiveness in physics and biology classrooms. That first adoption led in two major directions: (1) the careful study of the efficacy of PI in computer science - leading to PI becoming the best studied pedagogy in computing (at the time of writing), and (2) the adoption of PI by a number of faculty at a variety of institutions across the country. This chapter examines what factors led to the success of that initial adoption and what led to PI’s success in the field of computing.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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