A flipped classroom redesign in general chemistry

Abstract

The flipped classroom continues to attract significant attention in higher education. Building upon our recent parallel controlled study of the flipped classroom in a second-term general chemistry course (J. Chem. Educ., 2016, 93, 13-23), here we report on a redesign of the flipped course aimed at scaling up total enrollment while keeping discussion sizes small (i.e., <30 students), and maintaining equivalent contact hour load for faculty and workload for students. To that end, the course format featured lecture contact pushed outside of the classroom in the form of video lectures (mean duration 13 minutes) paired with online homework sets, and three parallel weekly one-hour discussion sections were held in adjoining lab rooms immediately prior to the three-hour laboratory session. As in our previous design, the discussion sections were led by teaching assistants; however, the weekly discussion meeting was shortened from 75 minutes to 50 minutes, and the primary instructor "floated" between the three parallel sessions. Two such sessions were held each week, affording a possible enrollment of 144; initial enrollment was 141, with students self-selecting into the course. We examine student performance in and satisfaction with the course using: (1) a pre-test/post-test design based on the paired questions American Chemical Society (ACS) first-term and second-term exams, (2) data on DFW (D, F, withdrawal) rates, and (3) student evaluations.

Cooperative learning in organic chemistry increases student assessment of learning gains in key transferable skills

“…These results confirm similar findings by several research groups who reported that changes in organic chemistry classroom formats did not significantly affect outcomes on summative assessments (Dinan and Frydrychowski, 1995;Bradley et al, 2002;Chase et al, 2013;Rein and Brookes, 2015). Interestingly, a pre-and post-test study for flipped versus lecture general chemistry classes (Reid, 2016) revealed that the ''exam performance in the two sections is statistically different only for the bottom third, as measured by pretest score or percentile rank'' (Ryan and Reid, 2016). Relatively weaker students were also found to benefit more than their stronger peers in terms of outcomes on tests in a flipped organic chemistry context (Fautch, 2015).…”

“…Finally, the difference in format may have had a differential impact on a segment of our student population which was not revealed by our analysis. We did not examine the differential impact of active learning on different student populations (by demographics, previous grades, or pre-matriculation standardized test scores, for example), which may have revealed useful information similar to previous findings in studies which looked at student preparation distribution aspects in the analyses (Fautch, 2015;Reid, 2016;Ryan and Reid, 2016).…”

Flipped classroom experiences and their impact on engineering students’ attitudes towards university-level mathematics

“…Among the different active learning experiences reported in the literature, the flipped classroom has been one of the most commonly discussed during the last decade (Reid, 2016). This strategy is characterized by delivering instructional content outside of the classroom, which implies more autonomous work on the part of the students, while classroom activities are dedicated to the interactive resolution of problems or to developing in-class group projects (Bergmann & Sams, 2012).…”

“…The studies have noted the advantages of implementing the flipped classroom approach in terms of ensuring learning (Biggs, 2007) as failure and dropout rates tend to diminish while students' satisfaction with the course increases (Reid, 2016;Ryan & Reid, 2016;Trogden, 2015).…”

“…Over the last two decades there has been growing interest in conducting applied research of teaching innovation processes in higher education, especially in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) areas (Chasteen, Perkins, Beale, Pollock, & Wieman, 2011;Chasteen, Pollock, Pepper, & Perkins, 2012;Crouch & Mazur, 2001;de Araujo, Otten, & Birisci, 2017;Reid, 2016;Rein & Brookes, 2015). This is mainly due to poor learning results that have been identified in courses which use a traditional lecture approach as the main teaching strategy (Chasteen et al, 2012), which has raised questions about its use and foster change towards active learning in the STEM fields (Freeman et al, 2014).…”