Abstract:

The rapid advances of technology in the last decade have changed the landscape of education worldwide. Teachers have been developing new teaching models that incorporate technological developments into the classroom in innovative ways. In particular, through common and affordable technology, teachers can now create online video lectures in an easily-delivered format for online viewing. Classroom flipping is a teaching model that uses this technology and that has become very popular in the past few years.

The central idea of classroom flipping is to interchange the roles of traditional lectures and homework. In flipped classrooms students view video lectures at home on their own time, while classroom time is devoted to group work, homework, or other activities that actively engage the students with the material. Research studies on the effectiveness of online and hybrid courses suggest that student learning could be enhanced with video lectures as an alternative or supplement to in-class lectures. There are some studies on the advantages and shortcomings of classroom flipping; however, the vast majority of the studies have been conducted in school settings. There is not enough evidence about how a flipped classroom affects student performance and learning outcomes at the college level, and in particular in mathematics courses.

In this study we explored the effects of flipping a calculus class; in particular, we studied two main aspects: performance and attitudes. Specifically, we analyzed the impact of this teaching model on students’ performance on graded coursework. In addition, we evaluated students’ perceptions of the classroom flipping model by analyzing students’ responses to Likert-scale items as well as open-ended questions eliciting their teaching and learning preferences. In this paper we report the results of this study and discuss the implications for future research and practice to enhance the undergraduate learning experience of mathematics.

Keywords:

Innovative teaching models, technology and pedagogy, flipped classroom, students’ performance and attitudes.