Peer Instruction Lecture Series

This lecture series for a calculus-based introductory physics course at the University of Pittsburgh by Professor Chandralekha Singh covers topics primarily in electricity and magnetism (the final lecture covers wave optics). Professor Singh is making these videos available to all students and instructors worldwide under the creative commons license. These lectures can also be helpful for high school students taking AP calculus-based electricity and magnetism.

These lectures make use of the peer instruction technique in which students talk to their peers and make sense of the material discussed. In all lectures EXCEPT lectures 1, 2, 7, 10, 18, 19.5, 20, 25, 25.5 and 27, students use "clickers" or a classroom response system to respond to "concept tests" [1] which are multiple-choice questions based upon the material covered in the lectures. Instructors can use these lectures to learn how peer instruction technique can be used in a large physics class.

As stated in Mazur's manual of peer instruction [1], the fundamental goal of implementing a peer instruction strategy in class is "to exploit student interaction during lectures and focus students' attention on underlying concepts". Peer interaction keeps students alert during the lectures because they know they must discuss the questions posed by the instructor with their peers, and the process helps them in the learning process and in organizing and extending their knowledge. Articulating one's opinion requires attention to logic and organization of thought processes. Instant feedback from students via clickers also provides a "reality check" to the instructors about the extent to which students have learned the concepts. This check can help instructors adjust the pace of the class appropriately. Moreover, there often is a mismatch between the instructor and the students' expectations of the level of understanding. Peer instruction helps convey the instructor's expectations to the students. An additional advantage of peer discussion is that it is embedded in a context that can help students retain and recreate the content by remembering the discussion. The peer instruction approach can be implemented without clickers, but clickers allow students to answer the questions anonymously and they also provide feedback to instructor which can be used to improve teaching (students can be awarded some additional incentive for answering clicker questions, e.g., 80% of the maximum point can be awarded to a student for each question for attempting it even if the answer is incorrect and 100% for answering it correctly).

  1. E. Mazur, Peer Instruction: A User's Manual, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997, pp. 7-10.

Please note each lecture video has details of what is discussed in its description section along with hyperlinks to places in the video where new topics start. Click on the hyperlink to start at a particular topic. Also, note that the topics covered in all of the lecture videos can be found by clicking here.

Jump to a Lecture: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10 · 11 · 12 · 13 · 14 · 15 · 16 · 17 · 18 · 19 · 20 · 21 · 22 · 23 · 24 · 25 · 26 · 27

Lectures 1 and 2

Lectures 3 and 4

Lectures 5 and 6

Lectures 7 and 8

Lectures 9 and 10

Lecture 9

  • Half of this lecture is devoted to example problems including concept tests related to material covered in Lectures 1-8 (First 46 m)
  • Electric potential and electric potential energy (starts at 46 m)
  • Relation between electric field and electric potential (starts at 51 m 30 s)
  • Derivation of potential due to a point charge (starts at 56 m)
    • Plotting potential due to a point charge
  • Potential due to several point charges (1 h 8 m 25 s)
  • Equipotential surface (1 h 21 m 30 s)
    • Work done by the electric force is zero when a test charge is moved from one point to another on an equipotential surface
    • Electric field everywhere is perpendicular to equipotential surface
    • Equipotential surfaces due to a point charge
    • Equipotential surfaces due to a parallel plate capacitor
    • Equipotential surfaces due to an electric dipole

Lecture 10

  • Full class devoted to example problems related to material covered in Lectures 1-8

Lectures 11 and 12

Lectures 13 and 14

Lectures 15 and 16

Lectures 17 and 18

Lectures 19 and 19.5

Lectures 20 and 21

Lectures 22 and 23

Lectures 24 and 25

Lectures 25.5 and 26

Lecture 27