The model has grown more popular, and there’s evidence to support it: While the size of the effect varies, studies have shown that flipped classrooms lead to better outcomes than traditional ones.
But a new meta-analysis published in Frontiers in Education complicates that picture. The paper, based on an examination of 173 studies, does find that flipping yields better student outcomes — but not for the reasons its proponents would probably expect. The benefit wasn’t driven by students using class time for active learning — by and large, their classes didn’t even offer much of it.
Instead, the meta-analysis found, flipped classrooms helped students by increasing their exposure to the content. Students essentially took a traditional class that lasted longer.
“To the extent that people might flip their classrooms with the hope that that would be the magic bullet, no, that’s not true,” said Manu Kapur, a professor in the department of humanities, social and political science at ETH Zürich, in Switzerland, and the paper’s lead author, in an interview. “I think you really need to pay attention to how you’re designing both the online content and the in-class interaction.”
The meta-analysis considers studies in the aggregate: It doesn’t show that no instructors who’ve flipped their classrooms provide active learning in class, Kapur said. But even when active learning was present, the paper notes, it did not add to the effect.
“This questions the quality of implementation of many flipped studies, as one of the core claims is that active learning is critical to its success,” wrote Kapur and his co-authors, John Hattie, Irina Grossman, and Tanmay Sinha. “It seems not.”
The meta-analysis also found that when traditional classes included more active learning, the gap between them and flipped classes closed or even reversed. This suggests, the paper says, that well-designed active learning works regardless of flipping, “and we should focus on that more squarely.” (There could be other reasons for flipping, the authors note, such as improving access to the course content.)
The authors identified one form of active learning as particularly effective: problem-solving. That led them in an unexpected direction, tying their findings to literature on productive failure.
The paper also points out that while flipping is regarded as an innovation, both it and a traditional model have two steps, and they’re in the same order: content delivery, followed by practice.
The authors propose a different model of flipping that gives their paper its title, “Fail, Flip, Fix, and Feed — Rethinking Flipped Learning: A Review of Meta-Analyses and a Subsequent Meta-Analysis.”
Their model:
- Fail: Give students a chance to try solving problems. They won’t have all the information needed to arrive at the solution, but the attempt activates their prior learning and primes them for the coming content.
- Flip: Deliver the content ahead of class, perhaps in a video lecture.
- Fix: During class time, a traditional lecture can deepen understanding and correct misperceptions.
- Feed: Formative assessment lets students check their level of understanding.
I find this paper interesting for a number of reasons. It ties into a challenge I’d like to dig into in the future: the gap that can exist between a teaching approach as described in research literature and as applied in the classroom. Is that something you’ve studied, observed, or wondered about? I’d love to hear more: beckie.supiano@chronicle.com
Connecting in Large Courses
I recently posed a reader’s question about how best to engage students in a large, introductory class. Many of the responses we received described ways instructors have found to connect students to one another.
Susan E. Shadle, vice provost for undergraduate studies and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Boise State University, described an approach she’s used in general-chemistry courses that usually have 140 students but have had up to 250. “I assign seats and put students into ‘neighborhoods’ in the classroom,” Shadle writes. “Each neighborhood has a ‘peer mentor’ (an undergraduate TA) who helps to facilitate student learning during the class period. Within the neighborhood, students are in groups of three or four (depends on the landscape of the chairs and seating in the room).
The students get very attached to their Peer Mentor over the semester and being in a neighborhood creates the sense of being in a smaller class. I use Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) to frame the active learning in my courses, so much of each class period is spent with students in their groups looking at new ideas, building conceptual knowledge, and/or practicing problem solving.” Teaching such large classes is not ideal. Shadle adds: “If I had my druthers, I’d always rather teach a smaller section because it is easier to build relationships with students. However, I’ve found these approaches work well to create community and engagement in the large enrollment ‘space’.”
Chelsea Green relies on group work to make the business law course she teaches to 75 undergraduates at Miami University’s business school successful. “Group work encourages participation the most,” writes Green, an assistant clinical professor in business legal studies at the Ohio-based university. “Assigning groups that change about three times a semester gives students a support group and as they get to know classmates, can reduce anxiety in speaking in front of a big class.
Often I send out a slide deck before class, each slide has a topic heading and in the notes I will include a website link to a recent enforcement action or something else. Group one has slide one, etc. I ask the group to give the facts, legal issue, holding and what the company might have done better. Then we go through the slide deck as a class with someone from each group presenting their slide. I dictate who presents by choosing a random facts like the oldest in the group reports or the one whose birthday is coming up soonest.”
“One proven strategy for connecting with students in high-enrollment courses is getting them talking with one another about the content in the course,” wrote James P. Frazee, deputy chief information officer and senior associate vice president at San Diego State University. “‘Think-pair-share’ is an activity that only takes a few minutes, and definitely increases engagement by asking students to reflect on the material, pair up with another student, and share their viewpoints. Asking students to write down the “muddiest point” from a class lecture, unit or module, and then share that with another student is a way to get students interacting with each other. The benefit with this approach is that it can reveal sticking points, and areas where students are bumping up against material. This can then inform iterative instructional-design adjustments, and might point to areas where the instructor may wish to provide more examples, or opportunities for practice. Asking a student who is not bumping up against that material to provide a brief overview from their vantage point (presuming it is on target) is another tactic to consider.
Yet another tried-and-true strategy is providing “engagement” points for responding to questions or polling prompts via an audience-response system such as iClicker. Bringing in guest speakers, and designing assignments that require teams of students to present about the course material can also boost engagement, and provide another perspective on the content. One strategy that doesn’t work, ‘uninterrupted lecturing!’”
Will This Be on the Final?
One change many professors made to their teaching during the initial phase of emergency remote instruction was how they gave finals. There were at least two compelling reasons to do so: the logistics of offering a test online (including the presumed ease of cheating) and the enormous disruption everyone was living through.
At the time, I wrote this story about some of the directions professors had gone in: offering options, inviting reflection, and simply giving students more time.
I wonder whether such changes have stuck. Did you change the way you approached finals because of the pandemic? If so, have you kept those changes, gone back to what you’d done before, or gone in a different direction entirely? And why? Let me know at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com and your example may appear in a future newsletter.
— Beckie
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