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I had never seen peer instruction used before I used it in my own class and I think that
can be a big barrier to wanting to try something new because you need to see how it works.
I had doubts about starting to use peer instruction and not in particular that I doubted that
it would work or that it would achieve the goals of helping students learn more, but
I doubted that it could really be applied to the courses that I taught and the particular
topics that I needed to get across in my classes. And I think a lot of that stemmed from the
fact that as a student I'd never been taught in that way.
We spend many years sitting in classes that are taught in a conventional lecture format,
and it's hard to picture what will this look like.
Will it really work? And I found that once I committed to using
peer instruction, that my approach to each lecture changed and I would say, "What really
are the most important things here?" and once I approached the lectures in that way, it
become very clear how I could teach those using peer instruction.
So the hows and the details took care of themselves once I really committed to, "This is the way
we're going to handle it." I hope when people watch this video, they
can see it really does work and it really does work with the particular students that
we have at UCSD and that students welcome it as long as they know that it's really being
done to help them and to help them learn.