  We describe a study in which introductory physics students engage in
reflection with peers about problem solving. The recitations for an
introductory physics course with 200 students were broken into the "Peer
Reflection" (PR) group and the traditional group. Each week in recitation,
students in the PR group reflected in small teams on selected problems from the
homework and discussed why solutions of some students employed better problem
solving strategies than others. The graduate and undergraduate teaching
assistants (TAs) in the PR group recitations provided guidance and coaching to
help students learn effective problem solving heuristics. In the recitations
for the traditional group, students had the opportunity to ask the graduate TA
questions about the homework before they took a weekly quiz. The traditional
group recitation quiz questions were similar to the homework questions selected
for "peer reflection" in the PR group recitations. As one measure of the impact
of this intervention, we investigated how likely students were to draw diagrams
to help with problem solving. On the final exam with only multiple-choice
questions, the PR group drew diagrams on more problems than the traditional
group, even when there was no external reward for doing so. Since there was no
partial credit for drawing the diagrams on the scratch books, students did not
draw diagrams simply to get credit for the effort shown and must value the use
of diagrams for solving problems if they drew them. We also find that,
regardless of whether the students belonged to the traditional or PR groups,
those who drew more diagrams for the multiple-choice questions outperformed
those who did not draw them.
