Compensatory Effects of Flipped Learning for Experienced & New Faculty
- Conference
- Location
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Minneapolis, MN
- Publication Date
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August 23, 2022
- Start Date
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June 26, 2022
- End Date
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June 29, 2022
- Conference Session
- Page Count
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26
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--41370
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/41370
- Download Count
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359
Paper Authors
Sarah Wodin-Schwartz Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Prof. Wodin-Schwartz is passionate about teaching core engineering and critical thinking skills that apply to application driven problem solving. She is excited to work with students to help them understand not only the technical skills required of them as engineers but also the social, environmental, and physical implications of implementing technical engineering solutions. Her work with adding context to problems and projects her courses has lead her to receive teaching awards including the Russell M. Searle and Morgan Distinguished Instructorships in Mechanical Engineering, the Romeo L. Moruzzi Young Faculty Award, and the KEEN Rising Star Award.
Kimberly Lechasseur Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Kimberly LeChasseur is a Research & Evaluation Associate with the Center for Project-Based Learning and the Morgan Teaching & Learning Center at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Her PhD is in Educational Leadership & Policy Studies. Prior to joining WPI, she was on faculty at the Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut, where she taught foundations of education and qualitative methods.
Adam Powell Worcester Polytechnic Institute
I am an Associate Professor in the Mechanical & Materials Engineering department, having joined the WPI faculty in August 2018. My field is materials processing, and research focuses on greenhouse gas emissions reduction, elimination, and drawdown. Current projects aim to reduce vehicle body weight, lower solar cell manufacturing energy use and cost with improved safety, reduce or eliminate aviation greenhouse gas impact, power ships and trains with zero emissions, and improve grid stability as we drive toward 100% renewables. The primary tool for achieving these goals is mathematical modeling of metal processes, particularly electrochemical processes, validated by key experiments.
I currently teach Materials Processing, Analytical Methods, and Statics. All of my classes use tests with two sittings, a practice which appears to improve learning outcomes via peer learning between the two sittings, as described by a paper at ASEE 2022. And drawing from 50 years of project based learning scholarship at WPI, most of my classes include a team project, though I haven't yet figured out how to scale this to classes larger than 50 students.
Yihao Zheng Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Yihao Zheng is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). He is also affiliated with the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Robotics Engineering. Before joining WPI in 2019, he worked as a Research Investigator in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan (UM). At the same time, he also was a Research Assistant at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from UM in 2016.
Sneha Prabha Narra Carnegie Mellon University
Sneha Prabha Narra received her B.E. in civil engineering in 2012 from Osmania University, M.S. in computational mechanics in 2013, M.S. in mechanical engineering in 2015, and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 2017 from Carnegie Mellon University. She then completed her postdoctoral training at the NextManufacturing Center at Carnegie Mellon University. She subsequently joined the mechanical engineering department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) as an assistant professor in Fall 2018. She spent three years at WPI prior to joining the CMU Mechanical Engineering Department in July 2021.
Abstract
Flipped classrooms that prime students’ conceptual learning before class and extend opportunities to practice applying content during and after class have a moderate positive impact on a range of cognitive, affective, and interpersonal outcomes. , Recent studies have begun to demonstrate that struggling students low achievers are well-served by this approach, benefitting more than their high achieving peers. Fostering these benefits may be particularly useful to new faculty. STEM faculty often do not have training in teaching. Developing curricular materials and managing the logistics required to flip a course is time-consuming, , especially for faculty establishing a research track record alongside teaching skills. Redesigning a course to use a flipped instructional design requires early career faculty to consider tenure criteria and productivity.
This paper describes efforts in one university’s mechanical engineering department to share flipped classroom curricula and pedagogies with two early career faculty members and with a mid-career faculty member new to the course. For Introduction to Statics, a core course required of many engineering degrees, a faculty member who received internal teaching innovation grant support created short videos (2 - 15 minutes long) introducing each new lesson and explaining key concepts. They also created hands-on learning activities to replace a portion of lectures with classic statics problems so that students would physically experience the problems, theories, and analyses they were learning to do on paper. Over several years, these materials were shared with three new faculty members, who were asked to use the same assessment.
This paper uses quasi-experimental methods to examine the impacts of each flipped classroom element (i.e., pre-class videos and post-class hands on learning activities) to address three research questions: 1) To what extent is there value in incremental adoption of flipped learning for new faculty members? 2) To what extent do flipped learning activities provide differentiated instruction for students who struggle with lecture? 3) To what extent does the value of flipped learning activities depend on having an experienced instructor facilitating them? The sample includes 392 students enrolled in one of six Introduction to Statics course sections taught by one of four faculty members between Fall 2019 and Fall 2021. Data were collected via the validated Student Assessment of their Learning Gains (SALG) tool, which asks students to retrospectively assess their growth towards each student learning objective, as well as the contribution of each learning activity.
A series of hierarchical regression models reveal evidence that adopting flipped learning activities from colleagues has benefits for new faculty and their students. Both pre- and post-class activities had distinct benefits for student learning across a number of outcomes, suggesting incremental adoption is still valuable. Both watching pre-class videos and engaging in hands-on activities compensated for learning loss from lecture for struggling students. Although the instructor had a significant effect on several outcomes, the adoption of flipped learning activities had a positive effect on student learning outcomes even after controlling for instructor differences.
Wodin-Schwartz, S., & Lechasseur, K., & Powell, A., & Zheng, Y., & Narra, S. P. (2022, August), Compensatory Effects of Flipped Learning for Experienced & New Faculty Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41370
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