ConcepTests for Calculus

students in classroom discussing, one pointing towards the board

students in classroom holding cards and raising their hands

students in classroom discussing among themselves

a student explaining something to a fellow student

About ConcepTests

Peer instruction using ConcepTests (aka Think-Pair-Share questions) is a classroom teaching technique which promotes active participation and increases the visibility of student thinking during lecture. Originally developed for teaching physics, this technique has now been adopted in many science and mathematics classrooms around the country. Although used in a variety of ways, the basic model is:

Students are shown a short multiple choice question and asked to vote for one of the options
After voting, students are asked to debate their answers for a short period of time with their neighbors
Finally, the students are asked to vote again.

The first poll makes student thinking on the topic of the question visible to the instructor. The debate often corrects misconceptions and increases student confidence in answers supported by sound reasoning by their peers. The final poll indicates to the instructor whether further discussion regarding the question is necessary, or whether the common misconceptions were all eliminated by the discussion. The optimal situation is when the initial poll shows a fairly uniform distribution across the variety of responses, indicating the presence of misconceptions throughout the class, which then changes to unanimous consent on the correct answer after the peer debate. Even if the vote changes to a split between the correct answer and a misconception, the instructor can lead a whole-class discussion to correct the error in thinking.

To produce this response, the question displayed must be well designed and well timed in the course. The criteria for good design depends on the given student population. A good question for students at one school in one state, may not be a good question for students in another school or region. Using an easier question late in a given topic may not create the opportunity for good student debate. This library contains well-designed questions for Calculus students at Cal Poly Pomona, sorted by topic and ranked by difficulty in order to assist instructors in selecting and deploying questions in a timely fashion.