Combining Peer Discussion with Instructor Explanation Increases Student Learning from In-Class Concept Questions

Michelle Smith, William Wood, Ken Krauter, and Jenny Knight, CBE-Life Sciences Education, Vol. 10(1), pp. 55-63 (2011).
This study shows that the combination of peer discussion followed by instructor explanation improved average student performance substantially when compared with either peer discussion or instructor explanation alone. They also found that all ability groups benefited from the combination approach, and that strong performers were not helped by the instructor-only approach, emphasizing the importance of peer discussion even among top-performing students.