Pair Problem Solving

I use Think-Pair-Share regularly in my introductory-level general chemistry courses. It’s a nice way to inject a relevant learning activity to ensure students don’t spend too much time being passive sponges in class. It’s important that the question isn’t too easy to answer. And I always tell students ahead of time that I will be calling on them rather than asking for volunteers. That ensures everyone participates because no one wants to ‘look ignorant’ if they’ve been given time in class to think about something and check their explanations with a classmate or two. It’s quick and active!

 

I’ve done group problem solving for things that require some parallel work to generate data which then needs to be put together. Certainly it needs to be something that students cannot do alone easily in a short time period so they have to help each other divide and conquer! I don’t do this very often because it requires the right kind of problem to solve, one that takes a bit more time and resources. It also requires a bit more instruction and organization – I assign the groups to make sure there’s an appropriate ‘balance’ of different technical and communication skills.

 

I’ve participated in Pair Programming one-on-one with research students who are working on a coding project. When I’ve done this, the student is always the ‘pilot’ at the keyboard, and I’m the ‘navigator’ who watches for errors and makes (hopefully) helpful suggestions. I’ve only done this with a student who is experienced writing code and has taken several programming classes. I’ve never tried this as an instructor in a class, but then I don’t teach coding and would probably do a bad job at it.

 

What I haven’t done, but I just stumbled on, is Thinking-Aloud Pair Problem Solving (TAPPS). I’m surprised I hadn’t encountered it before, given that I read about pedagogy regularly and relatively widely. It’s similar to pair programming. Students work in pairs with one being the ‘explainer’ and the other being the ‘questioner’. This could work well if students are provided with a more challenging worked-solution of a mathematically-based problem. The explainer has to go through the solution step-by-step with the questioner asking for clarification if something is not clear or potentially providing some help if the explainer gets stuck. Or the pair could be trying to work out the solution to a problem in which case the ‘explainer’ is akin to the ‘pilot’ or ‘problem-solver’ who writes things out while the ‘questioner’ could function as a ‘navigator’.

 

I think TAPPS could work very well in mathematically-dense physical chemistry courses. I’m starting to look over my course materials for P-Chem 2 this semester to see where I might be able to incorporate TAPPS; or at the very least I will make notes to myself as the semester proceeds of what I can change for the next iteration of the class. It could also work in G-Chem 2 for some of the more-involved problems. I will probably need to experiment a little with the parameters of what works and what doesn’t. I’m sure it will also take some rejiggering of the course content so that sufficient time is given for a TAPPS activity.

 

One potential concern I have is that students may feel uncomfortable with having their working-on-the-fly process be exposed to another student, especially if they are not confident in their understanding of the material. So it might require some other less threatening pair activities earlier in the semester, and then have the same pairs tackle TAPPS activity later on after some trust has been established. To balance things out, maybe TAPPS problems should come in pairs so students take turns being ‘explainer’ and ‘questioner’ even in a single session. Since TAPPS should be aimed at something longer and more challenging than a Think-Pair-Share, different pairs might also work at different speeds so I’ll need to build in something to address this.

 

Anyway, I’m excited to potentially try TAPPS in my classes. Maybe an old dog like me can learn new tricks!