Evaluation Of Peerwise As An Educational Tool For Bioengineers

There is a need to develop, validate, and widely implement tools that incorporate proven educational strategies including collaborative learning, active learning, and peer tutoring. PeerWise is an innovative, web-based system in which students create multiple-choice questions and answer those created by their classmates. Creating the question bank, rather than just accessing an existing one transforms students from passive recipients to active learners. The objectives of this study were to characterize the use of PeerWise in a lower division bioengineering course and to measure its efficacy in improving student learning. Students who used PeerWise performed significantly better on the final exam compared to minimally active users. PeerWise was easy to implement, placing almost no burden on the instructor, and the majority of students in the class used it voluntarily to study for their exam. These findings demonstrate the potential of PeerWise to be a powerful and widely used educational tool for bioengineers.