Article:Flipping the classroom in business and education one-shot sessions: a research study. Madeline E. Cohen, Jennifer Poggiali, Alison Lehner-Quam, Robin Wright, Rebecca K. West. Journal of Information Literacy, 2016, 10(2), pp. 40-63 http://dx.doi.org/10.11645/10.2.2127
Thank you to Madeline, Alison, and Robin for their article and for writing this kick-off post for our discussion.
Bios of Discussants:
- Madeline Cohen is Assistant Professor and Head of Reference at Lehman College, CUNY. She has taught flipped information literacy instruction to business management courses.Email: Madeline.cohen@lehman.cuny.edu
- Alison Lehner-Quam, Assistant Professor and Education Librarian, Lehman College, New York. She has taught flipped information literacy instruction to undergraduate and graduate education courses. Email: alison.lehnerquam@lehman.cuny.edu.
- Robin Wright, Assistant Professor and Health and Human Services Librarian, Lehman College, New York. She has taught flipped information literacy instruction to health and human services courses. Email: robin.wright@lehman.cuny.edu.
Anyone can join this discussion! Participants aim to read at least some of the article in advance, then come along at 8pm BST and join in the discussion by adding comments to this blog post. You can see how this works by looking at previous discussions (just scroll down the blog for previous posts).
Library faculty at Lehman College, City University of New York, experimented with the flipped classroom model in an attempt to maximize the effectiveness of one-off information literacy sessions. As most academic librarians know, these one-shot sessions are often too short and assessment of student learning is challenging in such a short period of time. We saw students coming to the reference desk with basic questions after an information literacy class, even though that material had been covered in class.
We began to wonder about other strategies that would help us be more effective. We saw articles about the flipped classroom model, which incorporates pre-assignments and active learning, in the education literature, in blog posts, and at conferences. We were intrigued to try it as most of our information literacy sessions are limited to one-shot experiences.
We began working collaboratively when the Instructional Technology librarian sent an email to all library faculty to see if any of us were interested in participating in trying out the flipped model. Specialist librarians in education, business, and health and human services responded to the call. After a semester of experimentation, we decided to assess the impact of the model and to study it more formally, and so our research project developed. For the purposes of our research we focused on business and education, but the Health and Human Services librarian has been steadily using the flipped classroom model since our initial interest in the model.
We wanted to measure the effectiveness of the flipped classroom in the context of disciplinary one-shot information literacy sessions. We conducted a multi-semester study of flipped library instruction for business management and education courses. We hoped to gather information that would help us learn the following:
- Do students in a flipped session demonstrate greater knowledge before their session than the students in a control session?
- Do flipped and control students demonstrate significant, positive improvement in knowledge after their session?
These questions were explored through a quasi-experimental research design that included pre- and post-testing of flipped and control classes. Research was conducted over three semesters.
This was our first experience in quasi-experimental research design, so, in addition to learning about student response to the flipped classroom model in information literacy, we learned about research group composition, size of control and experimental cohorts, and random participant selection. As colleagues working on a multi-semester project we also learned from each other about ways to keep faculty engaged and to maximize student involvement.
The hypothesis that students in the flipped classes would score significantly higher on the pre-test compared to the control session was upheld by the scores of the business classes. These results were notable for a number of reasons. Most crucially, they indicate that students entered the flipped class with greater mastery of basic concepts than the control group. Students in the flipped sections of the education classes earned a mean score on the pre-test that was better than that of the control class, but this difference was not statistically significant. Perhaps a larger sample size may have erased or solidified this difference.
For our blog conversation, we thought the following questions might start our discussion:
- Would you be motivated to try and to study a flipped model in your information literacy classes?
- What subject disciplines might lend themselves to a flipped classroom model?
- This model requires commitment from academic faculty. What can be done to encourage academic and library faculty partnerships and collaborations?
- Based on the study, what could be next steps with homework and class assignment design being mindful of lower order and higher order thinking skills?
References
Arnold-Garza, S. 2014. The flipped classroom teaching model. Communications in Information Literacy [Online] 8(1), pp. 7–21. Available at: http://www.comminfolit.org/index.php?journal=cil&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=v8i1p7 [Accessed: 25 July 2016].
Datig, I. and Ruswick, C. 2013. Four quick flips: Activities for the information literacy classroom. College and Research Libraries News [Online] 74(5), pp. 249–257. Available at: http://crln.acrl.org/content/74/5/249.full [Accessed: 25 July 2016].
Gibes, E. A. and James, H. 2015. Is flipping enough? A mixed approach to introductory information literacy instruction. College and Research Libraries News [Online] 76(1), pp. 10–13. Available at: http://crln.acrl.org/content/76/1/10.short [Accessed: 25 July 2016].
Goetz, J. E. and Barber, C. R. 2015. Evaluating a pre-session homework exercise in a standalone information literacy class. Communications in Information Literacy [Online] 9(2), pp.176–185. Available at: http://www.comminfolit.org/index.php?journal=cil&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=v9i2p176&path%5B%5D=220 [Accessed: 25 July 2016].
Rivera, E. 2015. Using the flipped classroom model in your library instruction course. The Reference Librarian 56(1), pp. 34–41. http://doi.org/10.1080/02763877.2015.977671