Experiences adopting peer instruction

Articles about the \"flipped classroom\" regularly appear in high-profile venues like the Chronicle, the NY Times, and the Atlantic. The idea is that students read or watch lecture videos before class so that class time can be used to work problems, putting the instructor in the same room as the students when they realize they need help. Peer Instruction (PI) is a flipped-classroom pedagogy initially developed by Eric Mazur [1] to teach Physics. In PI, instead of a lecture, the professor presents multiple choice questions focusing on common student misconceptions. The students vote using hand-held \"clickers\" and discuss their answers with neighbors before a whole-class discussion. The effectiveness of PI has been documented with 20+ years of research.