Personalizing Peer Instruction in a Flipped Classroom

Flipped classroom has been increasingly adopted in engineering education. However it appears relatively challenging to deploy flipped classroom in the large classes which is characterized by student diversity in backgrounds and understanding levels. A possible solution is to promote peer instruction, through which students are promoted to learn with/from each other. This paper presents a learning platform, the P2P platform, that personalizes and guides peer interaction in a flipped classroom. Based on the student feedback, the platform functions to form small study groups, where students engage themselves in learning with and from each other. Meanwhile, the platform generates and forwards the instructor analytics reports of student learning progress and performance, so that the instructor can make informed decision to redesign and adjust the teaching. The P2P platform is described with respect to its system architecture, key functions, core algorithms, and graphical user interface. The P2P platform is validated based on an introductory engineering design course (n=282).