Using student-generated content to engage students in upper-division quantum mechanics

Abstract

Peerwise is an online peer learning community in which students can author, answer, and give feedback on each other’s multiple-choice questions. We describe the implementation of Peerwise in a junior-level quantum mechanics course over seven iterations, with 1369 student-generated questions in total. We describe measures of student engagement in terms of answering questions to prepare for course assessments and the improvement of questions. We discuss factors in the implementation that may have impacted engagement, including the timing of submissions, support for authoring high-quality questions, instructions on commenting and minimal requirements on authoring and commenting.