Investigating Peer Instruction: How the Initial Voting Session Affects Students' Experiences of Group Discussion

Peer Instruction is a popular method of implementation when using Student Response Systems (SRS) in classroom teaching. The students engage in peer discussion to solve conceptual multiple choice problems. Before discussion, students are given time to think and give individual responses with a voting device. In this paper, we investigate how this initial voting session affects students’ experiences of the following discussion. The data is based on student interviews which were analyzed using analytical tools from grounded theory. The students emphasize the individual thinking period as crucial for constructing explanations, argumentation, and participation during discussions, and hence for facilitating learning. However, displaying the results from the initial vote can be devastating for the quality of the discussions, especially when there is a clear majority for a specific alternative. These findings are discussed in light of recent quantitative studies on Peer Instruction.