Progressive Peer Instruction - From RED to GREEN in three steps. 4 years of reflecting to this, my refined method

OK, from RED to GREEN in three steps. There is more to it than just that but for all you visual learners I find the image accurately depicts what I now follow and find highly successful.

So I am a big big fan of Peer Instruction (PI) as titled by Eric Mazur, Dean of Physics at Harvard. The results are staring at you in the face and the methodology for doing so is simple to get started and fantastic in order to reflect and refine. I also read Julie Schell's blog and really enjoyed the perspectives of staff who have tried and failed with some of these innovative practices.

Now I have been doing PI for a few years, going on four this year. I do not do it all the time in terms of the interactive real-time quizzes as I mix up my pedagogy. I have refined my methods and reflected a lot on how I run my interactive PI quizzes. I will show you how they have developed below. Remember these are largely formative quizzes and whilst they definitely can and should be used summatively (end of a topic), I have found them best used in a unit where they are performed beginning, middle and end.

Figure 1 - From RED to GREEN in three steps visual.

First PI quizzes

• Repeat question once
• Didn't go through questions based on <75% correct etc. only loosely around whether I thought all students required because the percentage correct seemed low.

Current methodology for PI quizzes

• Repeat question until class is >75% correct. Ideally do this with a repeat button, but if not can be done manually out front.
• Grade questions through quiz in topic sections bunched together and within those sections increasing in difficulty on each sub-concept three times, then moving on. 

Notice I mention in my new, and current method, that I repeat the questions, but they also are grouped in topic sections and sub-concepts within those. The critical thing I feel that is now done is the step-up in difficulty for each sub-concept. This is really important in maths because for mid to low students they now have more scaffolding and I can chunk them up further. For high students I can give them a separate quiz and it really accelerates them.