Communication pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
ConfChem Conference on Flipped Classroom: Student Engagement with Flipped Chemistry Lectures Michael K. Seery*,† School of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin 8, Ireland S Supporting Information *
ABSTRACT: This project introduces the idea of “flipped lecturing” to a group of second-year undergraduate students. The aim of flipped lecturing is to provide much of the “content delivery” of the lecture in advance, so that the lecture hour can be devoted to more in-depth discussion, problem solving, and so on. As well as development of the material, a formal evaluation was conducted. Fifty-one students from a year 2 chemical thermodynamics module took part in this study. Students were provided with online lectures in advance of their lectures. Along with each online lecture, students were given a handout to work through as they watch the video. Each week, a quiz was completed before each lecture, which allowed students to check their understanding and provided a grade for their continuous assessment mark. The evaluation examines both the students’ usage of materials and their engagement in lectures. This involves analysis of access statistics, along with an in-class cognitive engagement instrument. The latter is measured by “interrupting” students as they work through a problem and asking four short questions, which aim to examine how students were engaging with the materials in that moment. Results from this, along with access data, quiz scores, and student comments, aim to build up a profile of how the flipped lecture works for middle stage undergraduate students. This communication summarizes one of the invited papers to the ConfChem online conference Flipped Classroom, held from May 9 to June 12, 2014 and hosted by the ACS DivCHED Committee on Computers in Chemical Education (CCCE). KEYWORDS: Physical Chemistry, First-Year Undergraduate/General, Internet/Web-Based Learning, Thermodynamics course. The flipped lecture model was attractive, therefore, in aiming to free up some time in lectures for discussion and on working on understanding of the material. The research questions in this study aimed to investigate whether students used the materials in advance of class, whether students would attend lectures, and crucially, whether these materials would allow for students to be more engaged with the content through in-class activity and discussion.
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he work described in the full ConfChem paper (see the Supporting Information) summarizes the design and implementation of a module through the “flipped lecture” method. The module, which was on chemical thermodynamics, was delivered to 55 second-year honors chemistry students in the autumn semester, 2013−2014. This communication aims to outline the approach taken in this implementation as well as summarize some of the useful discussion that took place during the ConfChem session.
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DISCUSSION OVERVIEW Much of the early discussion during the ConfChem paper presentation (see the Supporting Information for a log of discussion posts) focused on the implementation of the flipped lecture model. The videos students watched before the lecture were prepared especially for the implementation. This differs from other approaches, where previous years’ recordings of lectures are used. The advantage of preparing screencasts is that the resources can be much more focused, and subsequent inclass activity can be systematically built on the prepared screencasts. For example, students would complete some worked examples as part of the preclass workthese related directly to the textbookand then the in-class work followed on with a more in-depth discussion of these. This was complemented with worksheets that the students completed while watching the prelecture video (see the Supporting Information). The aim of these was to structure the students’ time and give them a focus while doing the prelecture work.
IMPETUS FOR IMPLEMENTING FLIPPED LECTURING IN CHEMICAL THERMODYNAMICS The rationale for implementation derived from two main drivers. First, previous work by the author1 has shown that the use of prelecture activities in a general chemistry module, whereby students complete some introductory work before the lecture, had a positive impact on the examination scores. This approach was grounded in cognitive load theory, on the basis that novice learners in chemistry become quickly overwhelmed by the amount of new ideas and terminology, and hence resort to surface learning.2−4 The second reason for taking the flipped approach was that chemical thermodynamics is a mathematics-based course, and over several years of teaching it, the author observed that students aim to reduce the content to selecting the appropriate equation to answer questionsrather than work toward a chemical understanding. Various efforts to move the students toward a deeper learning approach had varying impact, primarily because of the need to cover the appropriate amount of content to prepare students for subsequent years of the © XXXX American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
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DOI: 10.1021/ed500919u J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education
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A substantial amount of discussion centered on the issue of student engagement with the prelecture material. In this study, some idea of engagement would be determined by measuring access to videos (above 90%) and attendance in class (in line with class average for other modules). There was a shared sense of frustration about the kind of analytics that standard virtual learning environment platforms offered, so the extent of engagement was difficult to quantify. Some suggestions included asking students to write a short summary of the video content that included a question to ask in lecture. A variant of this was used in the implementation in this study; students were asked every second quiz what topics they were finding difficult. Engagement in class was also discussed, with some useful thoughts shared on using blackboards in class to facilitate group work, or else small whiteboards that could be shared between groups of three. Another theme from the ConfChem discussion was whether the approach generates different learning outcomes. Some of those discussed included self-direction (approaching an unknown task) and reflection−considering what is difficult and why. One interesting discussion, perhaps for future researchers in this area to investigate, is that it is difficult to pinpoint where any observed improvements may be coming from. If flipped lecturing is effective, where we define effective as better learning on the part of students, which of the components is responsible. Is it the preparation students put in before class, as cognitive load theory might suggest? Is it the active learning environment the approach facilitates? Or is it a combination of several factors? In this study, an attempt was made to quantify the engagement with students in class as they were working through the materials. As the article outlines, students were interrupted at one point in class and asked some questions from a cognitive engagement study. The results suggest the students were engaged with the task at hand, for example, they agreed substantially with the statement “I was engaged with the task at hand”. Finally, as the model gains popularity, an increasing number of faculty are preparing their own materials for use with their students. Learning materials developed in-house have the advantage of being more personal to students, and in previous work, my own students have commented that they liked hearing their own lecturer’s voice in screencasts. However, several commenters discussed the concept of peer-review of these materials. Some existing networks were highlighted, including the Flipped Learning Network,5 as well as using Twitter, discussing resources with the #flipclass, #chemed, and #edtech. There is a great community with which to share and discuss this exciting approach to teaching. This communication summarizes one of the invited papers to the ConfChem online conference Flipped Classroom, held from May 9 to June 25, 2014, and hosted by the ACS DivCHED Committee on Computers in Chemical Education (CCCE). This paper was discussed from May 9 to May 15, 2014. ConfChem conferences are open to the public and can be accessed at the CCCE Web site.6
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Communication
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected]. Present Address †
School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh, David Brewster Road, Edinburgh, EH9, 3FJ, Scotland. Notes
The author declares no competing financial interest.
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REFERENCES
(1) Seery, M. K.; Donnelly, R. The Implementation of Pre-Lecture Resources To Reduce In-Class Cognitive Load: A Case Study for Higher Education Chemistry. Br. J. Educ. Technol. 2012, 43, 667−677. (2) Sirhan, G.; Gray, C.; Johnstone, A. H.; Reid, N. Preparing the mind of the learner. Univ. Chem. Educ. 1999, 3, 43−46. (3) Johnstone, A. H.; Sleet, R. J.; Vianna, J. F. An information processing model of learning: Its application to an undergraduate laboratory course in chemistry. Studies in Higher Education 1994, 19, 77−87. (4) Sweller, J. Human cognitive architecture. In Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology, 3rd ed., Spector, J. M., Merrill, M. D., van Merrienboer, J., Driscoll, M. P., Eds.; Routledge: New York, 2008; pp 369−381. (5) Flipped Learning Network home page. http://www. flippedlearning.org/ (accessed Jul 2015). (6) American Chemical Society Division of Chemical Education Committee on Computers in Chemical Education. 2014 Spring ConfChem; Flipped Classroom. http://confchem.ccce.divched.org/ 2014SpringConfChem (accessed Jul 2015).
ASSOCIATED CONTENT
S Supporting Information *
The full ConfChem paper and a log of the discussion of this paper that informed this communication; sample student worksheet. This material is available via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org. B
DOI: 10.1021/ed500919u J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
