4+1 Interview: Eric Mazur

I am very excited to present this next installment in the 4+1 Interview series, this time featuring Prof. Eric Mazur of Harvard University. Prof. Mazur has been an innovator and driving force for positive change in STEM education for over 25 years, most notably as the inventor of peer instruction, which I’ve written about extensively here on the blog. His talk “Confessions of a Converted Lecturer” singlehandedly and radically changed my ideas about teaching when I first saw it six years ago. So it was great to sit down with Eric on Skype last week and talk about some questions I had for him about teaching and technology.

You can stream the audio from the interview below. Don’t miss:

• A quick side trip to see if peer instruction is used in K-6 classrooms.
• Thoughts about how Eric’s background as a kid in Montessori schools affected his thoughts about teaching later.
• What’s going on with Learning Catalytics now that Pearson owns it.
• Some thought-provoking ideas about the role of assessment in education.
• Eric’s Super Bowl picks. (Well, sort of.)
• And more!

The video that Eric mentions toward the end of the interview -- “Assessment: The Silent Killer of Learning” -- is on YouTube here. I’ll have more to say about this in a future post.

Finally, if you’d like a transcript, please let me know -- they’re not cheap, but I can post one if enough people ask for it.