We describe a study in which introductory physics students engage inreflection with peers about problem solving. The recitations for anintroductory physics course with 200 students were broken into the "PeerReflection" (PR) group and the traditional group. Each week in recitation,students in the PR group reflected in small teams on selected problems from thehomework and discussed why solutions of some students employed better problemsolving strategies than others. The graduate and undergraduate teachingassistants (TAs) in the PR group recitations provided guidance and coaching tohelp students learn effective problem solving heuristics. In the recitationsfor the traditional group, students had the opportunity to ask the graduate TAquestions about the homework before they took a weekly quiz. The traditionalgroup recitation quiz questions were similar to the homework questions selectedfor "peer reflection" in the PR group recitations. As one measure of the impactof this intervention, we investigated how likely students were to draw diagramsto help with problem solving. On the final exam with only multiple-choicequestions, the PR group drew diagrams on more problems than the traditionalgroup, even when there was no external reward for doing so. Since there was nopartial credit for drawing the diagrams on the scratch books, students did notdraw diagrams simply to get credit for the effort shown and must value the useof diagrams for solving problems if they drew them. We also find that,regardless of whether the students belonged to the traditional or PR groups,those who drew more diagrams for the multiple-choice questions outperformedthose who did not draw them.
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