Browse Theses

With the rise of technology use in college classrooms, many professors are open to structuring their classrooms in innovative ways. The classroom flip (or inverted classroom) is one such innovative classroom structure that moves the lecture outside the classroom via technology and moves homework and practice with concepts inside the classroom via learning activities.

This research compares the classroom flip and the traditional lecture/homework structure in two different college level introductory statistics classrooms. In the classroom flip classroom, an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) was used to deliver the lecture content outside the classroom. Students completed active learning projects in the classroom that often required the use of a spreadsheet computer program to help students work with the concepts in the course. In the lecture/homework classroom, students attended lectures on course content that included PowerPoint slides, and then students practiced with the course concepts by completing homework from their books outside of class.

The learning environment and the learning activity in both classrooms are investigated in this study with respect to activity theory and learning environments research. Students were given the College and University Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI) to measure both their learning environment preferences and their learning environment experiences. In addition, data were collected via field notes, classroom transcripts, student interviews, student focus groups, researcher journal entries, and student reflections. The quantitative data were analyzed using t -tests and MANOVA, and the qualitative data were analyzed using grounded theory methods.

The findings of this research show that classroom flip students were less satisfied with how the structure of the classroom oriented them to the learning tasks in the course. The variety of learning activities in the flipped classroom contributed to an unsettledness among students that traditional classroom students did not experience. Finally, the concept of student comfortability with learning activity is presented and developed in light of learning environments research.