Molding the Interactive Flipped Classroom Based on Students' Feedback

Flipped classroom model was widely used as an effective method to change the interaction of the students and the instructor during lectures. It allowed the students to go over the lower levels of learning in Bloom’s taxonomy (knowledge and understanding) individually and at their own pace. This freed the classroom time to go over higher levels of learning, such as critical thinking, solving and analyzing problems in the classroom which helped foster deep student learning and increased retention of the topics discussed. The setting of large lecture halls discouraged students from participating in classroom activities and allowed them to be passive during lectures. It was not easy for the instructor to differentiate between students who were prepared for class or those who were not, which defeated the objective of the flipped classroom model. By adding online quizzes to the flipped classroom model, the students were encouraged and motivated to do the work as part of the course objectives before coming to class. This increased their participation in classroom activities, thus enhancing their learning experience. In a second year fundamental engineering mechanics course, consisting of about 120 students, individually tailored pathways were designed for students to achieve the learning outcomes of the online modules. Using the graded online quizzes as an integrated part of the flipped resource material available online encouraged the students to go over the material before class. The online quizzes allowed the students multiple attempts and guided them through different resources with each unsuccessful attempt until they got the correct answer. The author conducted an online survey on the effectiveness of the model, and was able to collect successful strategies and challenges to work on. Some of the concerns student had were: more examples in the video resources, the lack of opportunity to ask questions while watching the videos at home, the lack of people to help with the in-class problems,...etc. These were all addressed during the second time the model was used in 2016. For example, to help students with their questions while watching the videos at home, an online platform was developed for the course that allowed students to ask or answer questions anonymously. The instructor closely monitored the discussion to ensure accuracy and completeness of responses. Correct answers were endorsed by the teaching team. 82% of the students participated on the online discussion with an average response time of 33 minutes. This improved approach was received very well by the students. This paper shares the whole experience including design, implementation, work-load, benefits and challenges of the model. The paper also discusses the changes that have been done to the model to address the students’ concerns, and the students’ feedback during the two rounds this model was used. The different assessment techniques used to evaluate the students’ knowledge on the material covered in the flipped classroom models is discussed. A comparison between the grades of cohorts instructed with the proposed model and with the traditional model shows the benefits this model incorporated into students’ learning.