We’ve written about the flipped classroom on Open Matters before, and it’s exciting to see new data on the learning style. US News reports “the bottom third of students made the greatest improvements in a flipped engineering program.” The article cites studies being done in university level engineering courses:
“If you’re just going to get up there and do a traditional lecture, that’s going to work for some people, but if that’s the only way they can get the information, the people it doesn’t work for are not really getting anything productive out of the class,” says Randy Weinstein, associate dean for academic affairs for Villanova University’s College of Engineering. “When they’re going to be able to focus on your material is not always going to be Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8:30 a.m.”
At Villanova, Weinstein helped lead a pilot program for flipping engineering courses. New data from the program given to U.S. News shows the bottom third of students’ grades were more than 10 percent higher than in a traditional classroom (the difference between a D+ and a C) and more than 3 percent higher for the class as a whole (moving from a C+ to a B-). Continue reading on US News.
One of our motivations for creating OCW courses with audio and video lectures is to support MIT faculty who want to flip their classroom, and to create a resource for educators around the world to use as they design their curriculum. Let us know if you’ve used OCW videos to flip your classroom!
