Below is a famous painting known as the “University Lecture”.

It depicts students at the University of Bologna, one of the earliest universities in Europe, founded in 1088.

If you look closely, you’ll notice our schools haven’t changed much (minus the clothing).

✓ Instructor up front reading from notes & talking 

✓ Students sitting in rows staring at instructor 

✓ Some students not looking particularly engaged (towards the back)

If you look even more closely, you’ll see the painting is more accurate than you might have imagined. (see highlighted part below).

Yes – a student is asleep.

For ~1000 years, lectures have been putting students to sleep.

And even though lectures don’t engage students, they continue to be the predominant style of teaching in our middle & high schools as well as universities.

Dr. Eric Mazur, a prominent and highly respected physics professor at Harvard, highlights why the lecture has persisted. (The above images were in this presentation by Dr Mazur)

When I joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 1984, I simply did to my students what my instructors had done to me: lecture. I didn’t know any better. 

I simply mimicked my own professors, which I think we all tend to do, right? We project our own experiences. I naively thought that’s how I learned my discipline, and therefore that’s how my students are going to learn it.

As we build The School of Entrepeneuring, we have the benefit of thinking from first principles and using data and research to inform what learning will look like at the school.

And we’ve found the teaching method that we’ll be using.

Although it has been around since 1991, it is criminally under appreciated and not nearly as ubiquitous as it should be.

The instructional approach is called Peer Instruction and was developed by the aforementioned Dr. Mazur of Harvard.

I’ve spoken to nearly 100 teachers (middle and high school) and <5% have heard of it. They know peer instruction’s cousin flipped classroom, but peer instruction is the more robust and profound instructional approach.

And for this reason, it should be more widely known.

And so this is my attempt to:

1. Solidify my own understanding of this transformational instructional approach which I find writing does
2. Spread the gospel of peer instruction 

In this essay, I’ll cover:

• What does learning mean?
• Why isn’t actual learning happening today?
• What is the best way to help students learn?
• Why does peer instruction work?
• Resources to learn more about peer instruction

What does learning mean?

You may think this is a strange question to start with.

Isn’t the definition of learning obvious?

Sadly, it is not.

As I’ve dug into our schooling system, it is clear that we don’t have clear objectives in mind when we talk about learning. 

What we do today confuses memorization of content and rote recipe-following with learning.

Too often, we think remembering information is learning when learning comes from knowing how to use information.

The result is that today we see “objectives” like this for classes “Reason about and solve one-variable equations and inequalities.”

Dr Mazur offers a concise and precise view on what learning is which I will borrow.

Learning is comprised of:

• Information transmission
• Information (or knowledge) assimilation

Information transmission is as it sounds. It’s the transfer of facts & information and can be done in many different ways ranging from lectures to books to the internet to chatGPT to podcasts.

Information assimilation, however, is where learning occurs. 

Dr Mazur describes this as follows:

“What needs to happen in order to learn is that as a learner, you need to build the mental models that underpin the information that is being transferred. You have information transfer and then assimilation of that knowledge, building the mental models that permit you to transfer things to another context and have the “Aha” moments.”

So our current method of bulimic teaching where we transmit lots of information and then expect students to memorize or follow a formulaic recipe and regurgitate it out on an exam is not learning at all.

Mazur puts a finer point on it and summarizes as follows:

“I think we all agree that if you can’t transfer what you’ve learned from the context in which you’ve learned it into a different context, you haven’t really learned.”

Sidebar: Today, we have a schooling system. This is different than an educational system. I’ll write more about this later, but if interested in this, I’d encourage you to read Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto.

Why isn’t actual learning happening today?

As Dr Mazur’s comments highlight, it is because we focus primarily on information transmission in schools today.

And we do that primarily via the lecture. 

Yes – that thing that has been putting people to asleep for 1000 years.

The lecture is an information transfer mechanism where instructors speak and students passively receive. The word lecture actually comes from the Latin word for “reading” which is at its core what instructors are doing, i.e. reading to students. 

They may have their time & place but lectures also have several debilitating limitations:

• Passive Learning: Students are not actively engaged, leading to lower retention and understanding of the material.
• Limited Interaction: There is minimal interaction between students and the instructor, reducing opportunities for clarifying doubts and exploring concepts deeply. Imagine a 1 hour class with 20 students where a teacher lectures for 50% of the time. That would leave 30 minutes to interact with 20 students equating to 1.5 minutes per student. Note: this is a highly stylized and unrealistic example as often lecturing can consume 60-80% of class time. 
• Inhibits Processing: The lecture doesn’t afford students and opportunity to explore or clarify a topic or have time to process and understand it. They have to keep up with the stream of information lest they fall behind.

In this presentation by Dr Mazur, he asks the audience the following question:

Think of something you are good at. How did you get good at it?

1. Trial and error
2. Lectures
3. Practicing
4. Apprenticeship
5. Other

I guarantee nobody reading this said lecture (choice #2).

So what is the best way to help students learn?

Mazur’s peer instruction model shifts education from teaching by telling to teaching by questioning.

It focuses on information assimilation and not just information transfer. 

It’s beauty is lies in the fact that it understands the obvious, i.e. that students don’t learn by listening.

They learn by doing.

So how does it work?

Typically, information transmission happens in class (the lecture) and the assimilation happens outside (assignments, homework).

Peer instruction flips the approach. (Note: this is popularly known as the flipped classroom today + a whole bunch of other similar terms just to make things nice and confusing)

How?

The transfer of information happens outside of the classroom – Whether via books, videos, podcasts, lecture notes in PDFs, etc, it has never been easier to transmit information in a way that allows students to consume it on their own at the pace that suits them. Peer instruction takes advantage of this.

The assimilation of information happens in class – It’s worth hearing Dr Mazur describe this as he did in the video below.

I’ve also included a text transcript of the relevant section below and break it down into 6 specific steps after that.

As you listen to the video above or read the below transcript, imagine/visualize what is happening in the class – how the students are sitting, the sounds of the classroom, how they are interacting, what their faces and bodies are doing, etc.

Mazur describes the process as follows:

You take a number of questions, go to class, ask a question, ask students to commit to an answer (note: done via a clicker)

Then you tell students, 

“Okay, now after committing yourself to an answer, find a neighbor near you who has chosen a different answer. Try to convince that person that you’re right and he or she is wrong.” 

The first time I did that, I was totally shocked by the engagement. I had 250 students in class, and they all talked. 

They were completely oblivious to me in front of the classroom. 

I’d never seen this before. 

What happened was that very quickly, they would zoom in on the right answer. Initially, it was a shock. 

Then I have them vote a second time, we wrap up, and the cycle repeats until class time is up. The rest is history. 

There are 6 steps to this process as described by Dr Mazur:

1. Question 
2. Think 
3. Poll 
4. Discuss 
5. Repoll 
6. Explain

1. Question

Step: Pose a conceptual question to the class

• What to Do: At the start of the class, present a question related to the pre-class material (the information transfer which now occurs outside the classroom). The question should challenge students to apply their understanding rather than just recall facts.
• Tip: Ensure the question is open-ended and stimulates critical thinking. Dr Mazur recommends a question that 30-60% of students will get right.

2. Think

Step: Individual Thinking Time

• What to Do: Give students a few minutes to think about the question and formulate their own answers individually.
• Tip: Encourage students to reflect on what they have learned and to consider multiple aspects of the question.

3. Poll

Step: Initial Polling of Answers

• What to Do: Ask students to commit to an answer by voting. This can be done using clickers, a show of hands, or an online polling tool.
• Tip: Use a method that allows for quick and clear collection of responses.

4. Discuss

Step: Peer Discussion

• What to Do: Organize students into 1:1 pairings or small groups to discuss their answers. Instruct them to find peers with different answers and try to convince them of their reasoning.
• Tip: Encourage students to explain their thought processes and listen actively to their peers.

5. Repoll

Step: Second Polling of Answers

• What to Do: After the discussion, ask students to vote again on the same question.
• Tip: Compare the results of the initial poll and the second poll to see how opinions have shifted.

6. Explain

Step: Instructor Explanation and Wrap-Up

• What to Do: Discuss the correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Address any misconceptions and clarify any points of confusion.
• Tip: Use the results of the polls to guide your explanation, focusing on areas where students showed confusion or disagreement.

Why does this work?

As you read or listen to Dr Mazur’s explanation of peer instruction above, I hope you visualized a group of students who might be:

• debating back & forth loudly
• moving their arms and pointing to make a point
• sitting side by side to explain concepts to each other
• cheering when the poll answers are revealed (or groaning if they were wrong)

Instead of a neat organized classroom of students compliantly sitting in rows and columns, they’re social, active and collaborating. 

There are some subtler reasons why this works: 

Reduces the fear of making mistakes – Students don’t like making mistakes or looking stupid in front of their teachers. They fear it might impact how they are assessed. 

Peer instruction minimizes that fear as students work with each other 

Avoids the curse of knowledge: Dr Mazur describes this well in the video abovel:

I don’t know what it is to begin to learn. Whereas if the student next to me has the right answer and reasoning and talks to me, he or she is more likely to have gone through the conceptual blocks, whereas for me, it was such a long time ago, I’ve forgotten about all of that.

Encourages critical thinking: By debating and defending their answers, students are not just in a more engaging environment but develop deeper comprehension and critical thinking skills.

Bloom’s Taxonomy, a long-standing framework for describing educational goals, is below.

Our traditional methods of teaching (lecture-based, focus on memorization and following formulaic recipes) cap out at remembering and potentially understanding on Bloom’s taxonomy.

With peer instruction, we move up much further in the hierarchy of Bloom’s Taxonomy with students regularly applying, analyzing and evaluating.

This is where learning and mastery can happen.

In addition, peer instruction more closely resembles the world students will graduate into. When we work at or build companies and have a challenge before us, we do that by collaborating with other people. And we make decisions and get to a better understanding of our ideas and problems through inquiry and debate.

These social, communication and critical thinking elements are all intrinsic to peer instruction.

As we design The School of Entrepreneuring, I’m excited to use and innovate upon the peer instruction model pioneered by Dr. Mazur. 

For parents, teachers and administrators who don’t think education should put our kids to sleep (as we’ve done for 1000 years), I hope this guide to peer instruction helps you push to enable real learning in your schools.

References to learn more

Dr Mazur has his own podcast called Social Learning Amplified which I’d encourage you to check out. And he’s done several interviews which you can find on Youtube or in podcasts.

A few of my favorite resources are given below:

• Video – Assessment: The Silent Killer of Learning 
• Podcast – Social Learning: Peer Instruction and Assessment Insights with Harvard’s Dr. Eric Mazur (The Brighter Side of Education podcast with Dr. Lisa Hassler)
• PDF – Confessions of a converted lecturer: Teaching as Telling or Teaching as Questioning?