Torstein LågRannveig Grøm Sæle, Espen Bjørkedal, Morten Øvervoll

A flipped classroom intervention in a large enrolment academic skills course

Paper presented at Librarians' Information Literacy Annual Conference (LILAC),

Swansea, April 2017

This is the story of…

… an ongoing struggle,… a near disaster,

… a moderate success,… and some lessons learned.

Outline

•Background: Setting, problem• The two cohorts, and how they were taught•Assessment: The assignment and the grading rubric•Results: Rubric scores, Fail/Withdraw/Pass rates•Conclusions & Limitations• Lessons learned and the road ahead

The setting

The problem

How to help students become adept and information literate learners at university?

PSY-0700 Thinking, learning and writing in higher education

Learning strategies• Describe conditions conducive to learning• Evaluate your own learning strategies• Judge your own knowledge on a topic• Planning for effective learning

PSY-0700 Thinking, learning and writing in higher education

Basic practical skills• Perform simple topic searches for scholarly literature using

appropriate resources• Retrieve literature from library collections• Construct text with a clear main message and clear

structure• Cite sources correctly• Keep an accurate reference list in APA style

PSY-0700 Thinking, learning and writing in higher education

General academic skills• Identify the main message of a text• Recognise common forms of valid and invalid arguments• Judge the soundness of arguments• Build your own independet argument• Use simple rules of thumb to judge the validity and

relevance of a source• Use sources to support an argument• Avoid plagiarism

Assessment

•Written home exam, student's own research question•All specifics (including grading rubric and grader

instructions) available to students on first day of class

The grading rubric

The 2015 version•232 students•Weekly plenary lectures (2x45 min)• Large auditorium• Little or no interactivity

•Weekly "seminar" (2x45 min)• Groups of 10-30 students• Led by senior students• Activities and discussion

Herbert Simon (1916 – 2001)

«Learning results from what the student does and thinks and only from what the student does and thinks. The teacher can advance learning only by influencing what the student does to learn.»

Quoted in Ambrose S.A., Bridges M.W., DiPietro M., et al. (2010) How learning works: 7 research-based principles for smart teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

(Portrait by Richard Rappaport, 1987. Wikimedia Commons.)

The essence of the flipped classroom

IN THE CLASSROOM: OUTSIDE OF THE CLASSROOM:

Teacher-centered, "information transmission"

teaching

Student-centered learning activities

What happens in the traditional model:

Not a lot

What happens in the flipped model:

flip

The 2016 version• 315 students•Weekly pre-class:• 1-4 video lectures (approx. 10 min each; posted on Youtube; links in LMS)• Simple comprehension check quiz in LMS• Mandatory pre-class assignement

•Weekly in-class (2x45 min)• Groups of 10-25 students• Led by authors• Structured activity based on pre-class assignment• NB!: Students were turned away if they had not done the pre-class

assignment.

Results: Average rubric score

60

62

64

66

68

70

Mean = 65.8SD = 20.2N = 187

Mean = 68.4SD = 16.6N = 226

Figure 1. Average rubric scores by cohort year. Bars represent SEM.

2015 2016

Unequal sample t-test, not assuming equal variance (df from Statterthwaite correction):

t(359.6) = 1.4, p = .16

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Standardized mean difference:

Cohen's d = 0.14

Results: Pass vs. Fail

Pass Fail (Marginal row totals)Traditional (2015) 123 (63 %) 72 (37 %) 195

Flipped (2016) 173 (68 %) 83 (32 %) 256

(Marginal column totals) 296 155 451 (Grand total)

Table 1. Pass rate in students who submitted an exam

Note. χ2= .99, p = .32

Results: Pass vs. Fail+Withdrawn

Pass F + W (Marginal row totals)Traditional (2015) 123 (53 %) 109 (47 %) 232

Flipped (2016) 173 (55 %) 142 (45 %) 315

(Marginal column totals) 296 251 547 (Grand total)

Table 2. Pass rate in students who registered for the course

Note. χ2= .19, p = .66

Conclusions & Limitations

Limitations• No random allocation• No blinding• Numerous possible

confounds

Conclusions• Flipping a large

enrolment academic skills course is viable• Ensuring «uptake» can

be tricky

Lessons learned: Balance

“Balancing stones” by fotologic is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Road aheadFormalising formative assessment

“Studying” by Scott Akerman is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Thank you…

…for your attention!

Correspondence about this presentation to: torstein.lag@uit.no