Flipping with a Jigsaw, part 6

Part 6: Conclusions and suggestions

So that’s how I flipped my Social Psychology course. Overall it required a considerable amount of work, but no more than prepping a class for the first time. And, like most courses, now that I have completed the first time teaching it, the second time is much less work. In fact I am teaching it for the second time now, and I can report that it going just as well as the first time (and requires much less work).

Here are a few of what I think are the main points from this series of blogs:

• I challenge instructors to really consider the Dee Fink question: are you creating courses that will result in significant learning experiences that will endure well past graduation? How would you change your course if every student was as eager and able as your best student?

• We preach about the importance of active learning and many instructors insert episodes of active learning into their lectures. Flipping takes you all in; class sessions are (or can be) devoid of lecturing and all active engagement by the students.

• Flipping requires the willingness to give up lecturing at least to some degree, and perhaps totally. I admit that this was hard for me. I was used to receiving the students’ attention, with all the power and status that affords. Giving that up is a sacrifice. But I believe the benefit to the students is more important than the boost I get to my ego or my entertainment.

• There are many things you can do during the class time instead of lecturing. I chose the Jigsaw and can enthusiastically recommend it. The Jigsaw has a proud history and impressive empirical support. It’s also messy, loud, and chaotic. And I mainly stand around doing nothing while the students are working – but that’s the point: they are engaging with the material in active ways, not me. And I think that’s the way it should be.

Here are my suggestions:

• Realize that flipping a course will require a significant amount of prep work. I started designing my flipped class and the materials months before the class started. Build in that prep time.

• Read up on and consider the Jigsaw. It can work in nearly any discipline, from sciences to the humanities. It does require that you trust your students to not only learn material but also teach it to their peers. The success of the Jigsaw relies on the materials you design. And remember that the Jigsaw demands the engagement of every student in class, something that I’ve struggled to achieve in other formats.

• Use existing resources whatever you decide to do during the flipped class sessions. I used the essay questions I had crafted over the years and many active learning materials as the prompts for the Jigsaw. I also used many existing multiple choice questions for the quizzes. Take advantage of the work you have already done. I also suggest you look (again) at the resources that come with your textbook. In my opinion these have gotten better over the years and are worth a new look.

• And finally, don’t fear change. I had my Social Psychology course ‘in the can’. I could walk into almost any day in the semester and rattle off the lecture without any prep, if I had to. And I think I did a pretty good job of it, too (of course). But Dee Fink’s presentation made me question the effectiveness of my course in achieving a broader set of goals. I’ve enjoyed treading the line between being fearless and foolhardy. I’ve not always fallen on the right side of that line, but I also know that line will take me where I really want to be.

Flipping with a jigsaw, part 5

Part 5: Student perceptions and performance

Of course I was nervous about how students would take to this dramatic departure from traditional classrooms. If nothing else they would not be spacing out in class. So during the first and last mental health days (I put them into the schedule to give the students a break from the Jigsaw, and to allow me to use some of my favorite class activities) I passed out a brief assessment of their attitudes toward the flipped/Jigsaw format.

The first question asked them if they would like to stay with the flipped format or go back to the traditional format (I stressed that switching was a real possibility in the first wave of data collection). Here’s what they said:

That is, all of the students said they preferred the flipped format in the first wave, and nearly all (13 of 15) said they preferred it in the second wave.

I also asked two questions that asked them to compare the flipped course with other traditional courses they’ve taken. One was about how hard they are working in this class, and the other was about how much they were learning in this class. The results:

In words, this means that they felt this class was about the same as other courses in terms of difficulty, but a majority felt they were learning more in this class than traditional courses.

I asked three overall evaluation questions. One was about how much they enjoyed the flipped format:

It’s hard to see in this figure, but it’s a 5-point scale. So a total of 3 responses indicated something less than 4 on a 5-point scale.

The other two questions were copied from the teaching evaluations we use at EKU (IDEA): teacher excellence and course excellence:

These data are consistent with data I typically get when teaching this course in the traditional way.

I also asked three open-ended questions: one about what they like least about the flipped format, and one about what they liked the most, and one about what they would like to change about the flipped format. The criticisms centered on the necessity of moving around so much during class, and how long the video presentation were (they’re correct; some are 25-30 minutes). Many students had no criticisms or suggestions for changes. When I showed my Chair the comments about what they liked the most he accused me of writing them myself. Some were admittedly amazing:

“Smaller groups allow me to ask questions about something I don’t understand whereas I wouldn’t ask if I had to in front of the whole class.”

“I am actually learning quite a bit and the format keeps me motivated.”

“You control your grade, it is dependent on how you study and what you put into it.”

“I like that I am learning more and retaining more. It also takes the stress of tests away so I can focus on learning and understanding the material more.”

“Being on equal ground with others. Makes it easier to understand at times.”

Overall I am very pleased by these results. My flipped class is not seen as a blow-off, and the students seemed to appreciate the purpose of the flipped format. I was concerned that I would take a hit on my teaching evaluations because of the novel format. These informal mid-term evals were encouraging, and my official (IDEA) teaching evals were almost identical to the previous time I taught the same course in a traditional format.

Unfortunately it is not possible to make direct comparisons between the traditional and flipped versions of my course in terms of what my students learned. While many questions from the exams in my traditional course found their way on the quizzes in the flipped course, the overlap was not complete. However, I can report that the distribution of final grades did not differ substantially:

These data contain grades from the past 6 times I taught the class using the traditional format (total number of students = 162), and just one flipped class (N = 28). Perhaps a slight skew to higher grades in the flipped course, but not dramatic (for the stats-philic, the average final percentage in the traditional course was 78%, 83% for the flipped, t = 0.22, ns.).

These data are not ideal for assessing what students learned in class (nor for what they might remember a year or ten later), but they are the best I can get. This is certainly a frustration when comparing teaching methods generally. And you can forget about random assignment. But overall my fears were unrealized and my hopes largely fulfilled. And that counts as success in my book.

Next up: Conclusions and suggestions

Flipping with a Jigsaw, Part 4

Part 4: The Jigsaw Classroom in my flipped class

So that’s the generic Jigsaw. The Jigsaw requires a lot of prep work. In social psychology we aren’t studying biographies or other material that easily divides into parts. Instead we are learning about theories and perspectives, studies and findings. So I had to come up with prompts for each learning group based on the course material. I decided to take advantage of another existing resource: the essay questions I had crafted over the 20 years of teaching the class. I used to give a list of 7-10 essay questions for each chapter and I would select 2 to be on the exam. Students might answer every question in preparation for the exam, but they also might not even look at them. What I decided to do is give each learning group an essay question about that day’s assigned material that they have to find the answer to. The questions typically require higher-level Bloom’s taxonomy thinking (analysis, application, etc.), and often the groups have to come to some agreement about the best answer as there is no clear right or wrong one. One nice consequence of using the essay questions in this way is that students get the answers to all (or most) of the essay questions that I used to give out in my non-flipped version, not just the few they work on alone or have to answer on an exam in a traditional class. In a class of 20-25 students, I typically create 5-6 prompts from the essay questions, so this means I can cover most or all of the essay questions in the Jigsaw.

After the Jigsaw I give a short, 12-question multiple-choice quiz that covers the material from the Jigsaw (the quizzes are only worth 10 points, meaning they can skip 2 questions). A few of the questions (and I tell them this the first day of class) come from the text or recorded lectures but are not covered in the Jigsaw. This means that if they don’t read or watch the presentations and only come to class they can theoretically still get 8 or 9 correct – a good grade, but if they want an A or B they need to do some work outside of class.

I also go over the quizzes immediately after they complete them. I collect the Scantron forms, letting them keep the quiz questions, and go over the correct answers (and the reason they are correct). Students leave class not only knowing the score they got on the quiz, but why they got the ones wrong that they did. As I’m learning from reading about metacognition, tests and quizzes are really best thought of as retrieval exercises, and retrieval practice is essential for learning. Students in my flipped class take 25 quizzes with 12 questions each, or 274 multiple choice questions. That’s more than they would in my non-flipped course. Plus they are thinking about every essay question! And they are working in groups, practicing cooperation, and getting to know their classmates.

Another benefit to the Jigsaw is that every student speaks in class. After 20+ years of teaching I can say that this flipped class with the Jigsaw is the first one in which every student speaks and is engaged in every class. I’ve struggled to get even half of the students to participate in seminar courses, and my non-flipped social psychology course only prompted the occasional brief discussion, usually from just a few students (aside from the active learning interludes). There’s no hiding in a Jigsaw class! If you want student engagement I don’t know of a better way to do it.

Next up: Student perceptions and performance