For anyone who’s interested, here are the Prezi slides from my “Flipped Classroom” presentation in the Library this week: Flipped Classroom Benefits.

The 2010 University of Illinois study I refer to near the end of the presentation, shows pre-class quiz gains of between 10% and 18% after their largest physics course was flipped.

Here’s the outline:

“A flipped classroom is a reversed teaching model that delivers instruction at home through interactive, teacher-created videos and moves “homework” to the classroom. Moving lectures outside of the classroom allows teachers to spend more 1:1 time with each student. Students have the opportunity to ask questions and work through problems with the guidance of their teachers and the support of their peers – creating a collaborative learning environment.”

Benefits of the Flipped Classroom:

• Students can move through the materials at their own pace. They can revisit materials they have not mastered.
• Students learn through activity in the classroom instead of listening to a largely passive lecture.
• This frees up the lecturers time for more 1:1 time with students who need the most help. Peer tutoring facilitated.
• Can be implemented so that the instructor has a good idea who is prepared for class, along with which students are struggling and what concepts or tools they are struggling with.
• Students who have mastered the material can be paired up with students who are struggling. Difficult materials can be reviewed.

Drawbacks of the Flipped Classroom:

• Equity: all students need access to computers and internet (libraries can help with this).
• Students need to be motivated to get the pre-class work done. If not they will struggle to keep up in class (much like with doing class readings now).
• While flipping is a great pedagogical tool, it is not necessarily the best tool in all situations… But it is an excellent strategy for all teachers to have in their toolkits.

A Case Study: UVic Law Advanced Legal Research and Writing Class.

• Was guest lecturer for Knowledge Management Tool class for 3+ years… decided to flip the lecture in order to engage students more fully and give them hands on experience with.
• Show pre-class Zotero video from: http://richmccue.com/2012/12/13/a-flipped-class-knowledge-management-research-software/
• Show Intro Quiz – Gmail question
• Review Evernote Exercise – Install evernote on mobile device & desktop. Take picture of wite board with phone; sync to desktop; upload photo from desktop to Moodle (or Facebook if LMS not available)
• Back to Prezi: Review feedback from students. Only 10% preferred the traditional lecture over the flipped lecture. 80% of students agreed or strongly agreed that they were more confident with the KM tools after the in class exercises than they would have been with a traditional lecture.

University of Illinois Physics experience:

• Significantly better results on pre-class quizzes.
• A – level students viewing videos gaining 15%. non viewers staying the same. B – level students gaining 19%.  C – level students gaining 10%.
• Fewer students rating the course at very difficult.
• Great study by University of Illinois Physics department to check-out: http://research.physics.illinois.edu/per/details.asp?paperid=130
• Their method for large classes includes a multiple choice question or two after every video along with an open ended “why did you answer the way you did”, so the teachers can get a feel for why each student answered the question right or wrong.