Flipping Quantitative Classes: A Triple Win

Abstract

In the “flipped” class, students use online materials to learn what is traditionally learned by attending lectures, and class time is used for interactive group learning. A required quantitative business class was taught as a flipped classroom in an attempt to improve student satisfaction in the course and reduce the “transactional distance” (perceived barriers to engaging with the instructor, other students, technology, and course content) and increase satisfaction. Analysis indicated improvements to both transactional distance and student satisfaction in the flipped classroom. Multiple regression analysis quantified the extent of which each transactional distance was a predictor of student satisfaction. The improved satisfaction in the flipped classroom was predicted by the improvement in transactional distances between students, students and the instructor, and students and the instructional technology used in the class. The conclusions from this study suggest that the flipped classroom is a particularly good pedagogical strategy for quantitative classes. It allows the instructor to increase student satisfaction (a win for the students) in a course in which it is usually low without compromising academic standards (a win for the teachers). Finally, increased satisfaction leads to increased retention and hence increased revenues for the institution, which is a win for the administration.

Flipping Online Analytics Classes: Achieving Parity with Their Face‐To‐Face Counterparts

“…As indicated in the literature review, we will follow the process described by Swart and Wuensch (2016) and measure Relative Proximity, e.g., the difference, measured by TD, between how the courses were actually taught and what students would consider to be an ideal delivery. We ask the students to rate each element of Zhang's Scale of Transactional Distance for both the actual course as they experienced it and as if delivered in an ideal fashion.…”

“…Since its development, RPT has been used as a measure of satisfaction in several studies, including two published in this journal (MacLeod, Swart, & Paul, 2019; Swart & Wuensch, 2016). Details about the instrument may be found in any of the aforementioned references.…”

“…In a previous paper, Swart and Wuensch (2016) implemented flipped learning in an undergraduate analytics class in an attempt to alleviate this omnipresent fear of quantitative classes that, in the United States, often starts at the elementary level and remains present in college students regardless of major (Ramirez, Gunderson, Levine, & Beilock, 2013). Swart and Wuensch (2016) showed that student satisfaction with an analytics course taught in a flipped format was greater than student satisfaction with the same course taught in a traditional manner, indicating the flipped format helped address the anxiety that students feel about such courses. Given that the global demand for MBA's with business analytics skills was forecast to exceed 1.5 million in 2018 (Anand, 2019), any technique that improves student satisfaction and learning with analytics courses is important.…”

A Comparison of Student Academic Performance with Traditional, Online, And Flipped Instructional Approaches in a C# Programming Course

“…• statistics and quantitative analysis (Phillips & Phillips, 2016;Strayer, 2012;Swart & Wuensch, 2016); and • teacher training (Ng, 2016).…”

Continual Improvement of Online and Blended Teaching Using Relative Proximity Theory

“…In addition, the Online Learning Consortium (previously the Sloan-C Consortium) lists student satisfaction as one of the five pillars in its Quality Framework along with Learning Effectiveness (the others are Scale, Access, and Faculty Satisfaction). And, as demonstrated by Swart and Wuensch (2016), emerging pedagogies can simultaneously increase student, instructor, and administrative satisfaction. Rather, we view our work as combining with existing work on continual improvement of AoL to provide a process for increasing overall quality of higher education.…”