The document summarizes Brian Gross's experience flipping his ECON 301 class at Whittier College. Flipping involves recording lectures for students to view outside of class, then doing activities and exercises in class with instructor support. Gross recorded lectures using tablet/pen software, then created worksheets for in-class work. Students liked setting their own pace for lectures and getting help in class. While the first iteration showed lower exam scores, tweaks led to success in the second where students were well-prepared and completed difficult problems. Gross concluded flipping was worth doing and hopes to create more flipped classes over time.

1. Experience in ECON 301 (F15)
Flipping the Classroom
Brian J. Gross
Assistant Professor
Economics
Whittier College

2. What is "Flipping"?
• "The flippe d classro o m is a pe dag o g ical
m o de lin which the typicalle cture and
ho m e wo rk e le m e nts o f a co urse are
re ve rse d." (Educause, 2012)
• In many cases this means:
– Pre-recorded lectures for students to view
outside of class
– Followed by in-class
activities/exercises/worksheets/etc.

3. What I did
• I recorded a lecture video
– Actually, a series of lecture videos of 15
minutes in length each
• I then created a worksheet or activity to
complete in class
• In class, I allowed ample time for questions
and while students did exercises, I could go
around and help them individually

4. Technology Used
• A tablet with active (Wacom) digitizer and
pen
– There are drawing pads for macs/PCs
(www.wacom.com)
• Bluebeam Revu (www.revu2015.com)
– To "ink" my lecture on my laptop
• SnagIt (www.techsmith.com/snagit.html)
– To record my screen and audio as I wrote the
lecture

5. On the Video...

6. On the Video...
A 30 second clip, to show what it looks like..

7. In Moodle...

8. In Moodle...

9. In Moodle...

10. In Class...

11. In Class...

12. Challenges
1. Recording the video takes time...
– I found it typically took about twice as long to
record a lecture than it would for me to actually
give it owing to prep and processing:
• e.g. watching it afterwards; editing out stuff
1. ...and a quiet space
– My office on campus didn't work well; had to
be at home
1. It was difficult to lecture in a way that would
not reference discussions had in class
– (so this video could be used in future years)

13. Students liked...
1. The experience, as a whole.
– In response to a questionnaire, most said they
would like to do it again
– No one indicated anything negative about it
1. Being able to go through the lecture at the ir
o wn pace
– Either more slowly/ re-watching parts they
didn't understand
– Or skipping/ fast-forwarding through material
they feel good about
1. Going over the problems and getting help in
class

14. I liked...
1. Being able to show up to class without
needing to lecture. That was nice.
2. Now having that lecture available for use
next year
– Some of it was also material I find the least
enjoyable to teach.

15. I liked...
3. I was able to do more than I usually could
– I took exam problems from previous years and
made a worksheet out of it
– For the second iteration, I tried out a
game/simulation I would not have had time for
– I was able to cover more material than I could
have reasonably expected during the class
period

16. Assessing Outcomes
• For feedback and impressions, I had them
fill out an anonymous questionnaire
– There were no serious problems/complaints.
• Judging by overall student performance on
the exam following the first Flipped Class,
– My feeling is that they did not learn as much
on that material (in regards to my learning
outcomes) as they would have were it a
normal lecture
– But I do not think this is a function of the
method itself, but rather its execution. In fact, I
think I could simply tweak the in-class
experience a bit to focus on the key difficulties.

17. Assessing Outcomes
• Judging by my impressions from the in-
class experience following the second
Flipped Class,
– I was very impressed with how prepared
students were for class, having taken thorough
notes (in their own hand-writing) of the lecture
– And most everyone, with the support of fellow
students in groups, were able to successfully
complete very difficult math problems
– Many went much further than I can typically
expect students to go in the material
– Overall, I consider this iteration a great
success

18. Conclusions &
Recommendations
• It was definitely worth doing
• I hope to re-use the videos next year, and
create more flipped classes
• I expect to build (over time) a repository of
at least 5, perhaps 10 flipped classes
• Especially for those in quantitative
sciences, I highly recommend trying
something like this