Group items tagged

"This paper outlines an ongoing study of the flipped classroom with second and third-year undergraduate engineering students in a numerical methods course. The flipped classroom is a new pedagogical method, which employs asynchronous video lectures and practice problems as homework, and active, group-based problem-solving activities in the classroom. It represents the combination of learning theories once thought to be incompatible-active, problem-based learning activities founded upon constructivist ideals and instructional lectures derived from direct instruction methods founded upon behaviorist principles. Using a controlled quasi-experimental research design, we conduct a study with a full 15-week numerical methods course at Utah State University during the spring semester of 2013. Students in the experimental section completed model-eliciting activities inside the classroom and video lectures and homework outside the classroom. Students in the control section completed homework outside the classroom and group lectures inside the classroom. The two groups will be compared using scores from homework, examinations, and a sixteen-question numerical methods conceptual pre- post- test pair. The three main features that distinguish this study from previous research are: 1) This is a controlled study; 2) This study examines student performance on objective measures; 3) This study uses model-eliciting activities in the experimental classroom."

"Classroom Response Systems (CRS) have been shown to improve student learning outcomes by encouraging student engagement with the course content, instructors and student peers. The system's ability to provide immediate and quality feedback to both students and instructors, particularly in large classes, is highly desirable. While CRS has been used for well over a decade and been shown to successfully improve student engagement and participation, a number of studies have also identified that its use could potentially mean that less material is able to be covered in lectures. Clearly, the approach of cramming CRS into already content-heavy class time does not embrace the potential for CRS to improve student engagement and student learning. The use of CRS should be planned as an integral component of the course which enhances and reinforces the learning outcomes. The effectiveness of CRS depends strongly on the quality and variety of the questions, and the design of the activities to encourage students to engage with the questions. This case study explores the use of a new, low-cost, state-ofthe-art CRS (Top Hat Monocle) which allows students to use their mobile devices (phones, tablets, laptops) to respond to a variety of numerical, multiple-choice, short-answer and open-ended discussion questions posed during face-to-face workshops. In order to allow sufficient time to fully engage with the workshop activities traditional lectures were revised and the classroom lecture was flipped. Students worked through narrated lecture material (hand-e-lectures) online, prior to attending the workshops. CRS was included as part of the e-lecture content and feedback from this was incorporated into the workshops. Workshops extended the e-lecture content by including a variety of carefully designed, engaging activities (many were group activities) that used CRS questions to facilitate discussions, problem solving and case study analysis to enhance student cognition. Overall, the new-

"This work in progress compares two versions of a "classroom flip" instructional strategy in which lectures are moved from inside class to outside class. Class time is then spent on problem solving and feedback. In previous offerings of this materials science course, students were asked to read instructor-supplied lecture notes and complete an on-line warmup assignment prior to class. Informal cooperative learning activities such as think-pair-share were used during class, and clickers provided a mechanism for probing understanding and providing feedback. In the most recent offering, students viewed instructor-prepared multimedia microlectures and took an individual quiz as homework, then repeated the quiz and completed a problem set with an assigned team during class. Thus, the redesigned course delivered multimedia rather than text lectures, and utilized a structured team-based learning strategy rather than informal cooperative learning structures. Moreover, higher level "material selection challenges" were added to the redesigned course. This paper summarizes the planned assessment and evaluation methods to compare the two classroom flip models; results and analysis are not yet complete."

Abstract: An inverted, or flipped, classroom, where content delivery includes video lectures watched outside of the classroom, is a method that can free classroom time for learner-centered activities such as active and problem-based learning. This study compared the effectiveness of an inverted classroom to a traditional classroom in three areas: 1) content coverage; 2) student performance on traditional quizzes and exam problems; and 3) student observations and perception of the inverted classroom format. A control-treatment experiment comparing an inverted classroom to a traditional lecture-style format was used. The results show that: 1) the inverted classroom allowed the instructor to cover more material; 2) students participating in the inverted classroom performed as well or better on comparable quiz and exam questions and on open-ended design problems; and 3) while students initially struggled with the new format, they adapted quickly and found the inverted classroom format to be satisfactory and effective.