Just‐in‐time Teaching (JiTT) and peer instruction (PI) in a medical physiology course

A combination of Just‐in‐Time Teaching (JiTT) and Peer Instruction (PI) approaches was incorporated into the 2010–2011 UN‐ECOM first‐year Physiology course. During a 24‐hr period prior to each class, students completed a one‐hour, online JiTT warm‐up exercise consisting of three short‐answer questions. Two of the questions were designed to promote student reflection on the assigned readings, and the third asked students to identify concepts from the readings that would benefit from classroom discussion. The instructor reviewed these responses prior to each class and, based on the feedback provided, decided which topics to discuss. The resulting shorter and more focused “chalk talks” allowed for about 40–50% of class time to be used for various types of in‐class PI problem‐solving activities, with students working in self‐selected groups within the large classroom. In a survey, 98.9% of students agreed that the JiTT warm‐up exercises stimulated them to do the assigned reading prior to class; 91.6% agreed that the warm‐up questions helped them reflect on the content of the assigned reading; and 82.1% agreed that the weighting of the warm‐up exercises (5% of the total grade) was about right. When asked to rank all course activities with respect to their importance in learning Physiology, students ranked the “chalk talks” first, the in‐class PI problem‐solving activities second, and the JiTT warm‐up exercises last.