"Exploring a 'Flip' in Introductory Statistics"
Bethany White, The University of Western Ontario
Abstract
Our department offers a "flipped classroom" section of a large enrollment introductory statistics course to combine the strengths of online and face-to-face formats with a goal to enhance student outcomes. The 2011 Fellowship in Teaching Innovation at our institution funded the development and evaluation of this section.
Several sections of the course were offered each term in the 2012-13 academic year: two face-to-face sections (one on main campus and one at an affiliated college) plus a "flipped" section on main campus. Students in the face-to-face sections attended traditional face-to-face lectures three hours a week. Those in the "flipped" section watched short videos presenting content online and completed an online quiz before attending face-to-face group activity sessions to apply and delve deeper into the concepts they learned while interacting with the online materials. We were interested in whether or not the flipped section was associated with improved student attitudes toward statistics and understanding of fundamental statistical concepts. We were also curious about differences in student opinion about course format across sections. In this talk, I will outline our flipped course model and share some results of our evaluation.
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Comments
Nicholas Horton:
Flipping the classroom provides lots of options for deeper student learning, though it's discouraging that the CAOS outcomes weren't more positive. I'd be interested in hearing more about what the forum software: how does it work? how did the students respond to it? is there a sample quiz that you might be willing to share? @askdrstats
Bethany White:
Thanks for your comment, Nick! I was a little discouraged about the CAOS results too. It's difficult to draw conclusions based on these data though (i.e., confounding due to instructor, self-selecting to the course format, low consent rates). I visited a couple of the activity sessions though, and the environment was very different from a traditional lecture-based version. The students were very engaged with the content and with each other and it was a very positive, active learning environment.
Our LMS is Sakai, so the forums were just the Sakai forums (i.e., a LMS discussion board platform). The students were happy to take advantage of the forums, posting questions for the instructor and answering each others' questions. I can certainly generate a sample quiz and share it with you. Please contact me at bwhite@stats.uwo.ca and let me know the topic for which you'd like questions. Have a great weekend!