It can take some serious momentum to motivate the filming of your own video lectures to flip a class. But once the commitment is made, I think it is important to periodically monitor the student experience with the online lectures. There are two important questions to ask about the student experience with the video lectures. Do students enjoy watching them? And are they learning anything? I assessed these questions by conducting an anonymous online survey about halfway through the semester in Spring 2013. I had 100% student participation in the survey (n=54).
Do students enjoy watching the lectures?
To address this question, I asked students, “How do you FEEL about watching the online lectures?” 65% of my students reported enjoying the lectures. 30% said that the lectures were “ok”. Only 3 students (5%) said they really didn’t like watching the lectures. While there is always room for improvement, these results are satisfactory. I don’t expect students to be having a party while watching the lectures (though I did hear rumors of a drinking game that took place around my sometimes liberal use of the word “FOCUS”…), but the lectures do need to be palatable. Otherwise, students won’t partake.
Are students learning anything?
If students do not feel they are learning from the online lectures, then the whole flippin‘ thing is pointless. So I asked students how much they learn from the online lecture. I did not corroborate their opinions with exam scores or course grades, but I still feel this question lends insight into an important measure of success. If my students feel like they are learning less from my online lectures, their buy-in will falter and my goal of helping them master the material will not be reached. According to the results of this question, 89% of my students felt like they learned as much or more than they would from a traditional lecture. This leaves 11% of the students who feel like they are learning less…and while this is certainly an issue that deserves more attention (what exactly is going on with this 11%?), I do believe it is a satisfactory result.
Unconventional content delivery is just one half of the flipped equation. In the next post, I will talk about what we DO during class time.