A recent case study studies a math-certified elementary instructor who flipped her classroom and analyzes the advantages and drawbacks to the process. This study, published on Jan. 22, is one of the first studies of this kind.
Corey Webel, associate professor in the College of Education, was the principal investigator for a study on the effect on student-learning of mathematics with the use of flipped classroom instruction.
In a “flipped classroom,” students access lectures, demonstrations and learning materials remotely outside of class and spend their class time with the instructor doing homework, solving practice problems, doing hands-on activities or getting supplemental information from the instructor.
Webel said he and the graduate students who worked on this study, Christina Sheffel and Kimberly Conner, wanted to study flipped classrooms to understand how they could be enacted to be most effective for the students and teacher.
“We were interested in the potential benefits in terms of getting feedback [from students] and outsourcing some of the lecture [to a web video],” Webel said. “[We were] wondering whether that kind of approach would actually change the nature of the engagement. There are lots of examples of flipped instruction that do not change the fundamental relationship between learner and content.”
This study comes from a four-year grant from the National Science Foundation. Other studies included those relating to elementary math specialist certifications and departmentalization of teaching elementary students different subjects. To date, over $2.25 million has been awarded to these studies because of this grant.
For this recently published study, Webel and his associates conducted a case study on one fifth grade mathematics instructor, Joni, who was certified as an elementary mathematics specialist and decided to use the flipped classroom method. Joni is a pseudonym used for the subject in the study. The researchers interviewed her, observed her classroom teaching and sampled her instructional videos the students access to learn the math skills.
After the conclusion of the study, one benefit the researchers found was the positive impact of formative assessments. Joni was able to check student comprehension as they watched the lecture videos at home so she could alter her lesson plan for the next day based on their understanding of the concepts.
Additionally, the study found Joni’s process of a flipped classroom prevented misconceptions of math concepts from solidifying by having the students do homework during class time with the instructor. It also improved communication with parents as they could watch how the teacher instructed their children to do math in a certain way.
“[Joni] saw that these videos were really helpful for parents to help them understand this is the language she is using to talk about [a math topic]…so that helps the parents understand ‘oh, this is what these words mean when my kids ask me for help,’” Webel said.
Webel also noted challenges the teacher faced, such as time management. Sometimes Joni would spend more time going over what she had taught in the lecture videos than doing more practice problems in class, but Webel said he thinks this is typical of any learning environment.
The study states how learning the technology to create and post videos for the students may be time-consuming in the beginning, but also notes that Joni got quicker at it with time.
Webel said the findings of his study may be able to aid other teachers who are considering flipping their classrooms.
“I think that if there are teachers who are interested in doing some version of flipped instruction, that what we found would actually be helpful, like here are some things to consider and here are some of the challenges [the teacher] should be anticipating,” Webel said. “We wanna provide people with…a bigger schema of ways of interpreting kids’ thinking and then more tools to decide what to do about that.”
_Edited by Morgan Smith | mosmith@themaneater.com_
