This article summarizes the study carried out by Mary BethGilboy, Scott Heinerichs, and Gina Pazzaglia at West Chester University. The study focused on student perceptions of the flipped classroom in two 400-level undergraduate nutrition/diatetics courses, Professional Skills in Diatetics, and Community Nutrition. The outcome of the study indicates that students in these courses had positive attitudes about the flipped classroom and its effects on their learning.
The authors introduce their study by explaining the idea behind the flipped classroom, and why a shift in the way students are taught is necessary. Those topics have been discussed several times on this blog, but the authors' multiple references to Alison King's work is notable. King calls for instructors to become less of a "sage on the stage" and more of a "guide on the side." (King, pg. 30), and this is the idea behind a flipped classroom. However, the authors state that both roles are necessary, saying, "When faculty members serve as both a sage on the stage as well as a guide on the side, the can transform their course to meet the demands of today's learners and the calls for accountability," and that lectures have there place in education adding, "Although the lecture has been criticized, it is well documents that this for of directed instruction is necessary to teach students in situations where they hold little or no prior knowledge." (Gilboy, pg. 109). These points are interesting because the authors are not dismissing lecture, but rather saying it needs to be delivered differently. Another point that the authors make to this end is that lectures need to be shortened because "research on lectures has demonstrated that a student's attention declines after the first 10 minutes of class, and although it may return at the end of class, students remember only about 20% of material presented during the lecture" (Gilboy, pg. 109). Next, the authors describe their study. Faculty members attended monthly meetings throughout the semester to help them deliver their course via a flipped classroom. Here they learned about the 3 components of the flipped classroom that they used: before class, during class (face-to-face), and after class. Before class, students watched or viewed online resources, then took a low-stakes assessment on what they had learned to help ensure accountability. This work focused on lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy. During class activities were built around active learning where students use application, analysis, and synthesis of what they had learned before-class. The effectiveness of the flipped classroom was analyzed using an end of course survey in which 142 of 196 students voluntarily completed. Some of the findings of the study were that:
The authors' offer some advice on addressing students concerns such as instructors doing a quality check at the beginning of class on low-stakes assessments so that students understand their work is values and thus more willing to comply. In the "Lessons Learned" portion of their paper, the authors state that it is very important to obtain student buy-in by explaining the rationale behind the flipped classroom and that lectures should be 10-15 minutes in maximum length despite traditional lectures often being up to an hour long. Finally the researchers admit that their study was limited because it only looked at the students' satisfaction with the flipped classroom and not its effectiveness on learning outcomes. They call for more research to be done in that area as it is very limited at this point. References Gilboy, M. B., Heinerichs, S., & Pazzaglia, G. (2015). Enhancing Student Engagement Using the Flipped Classroom. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 47(1), 109-114. King, A. (1993). From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side. College Teaching,41(1), 30-35.
2 Comments
Alex Gardner
1/9/2017 11:22:08 am
Hello Taylor,
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Alex Gardner
1/9/2017 11:23:37 am
Hi Taylor,
Reply
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