Flipped classroom for doctoral students: evaluating the effectiveness

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South Ural State University

Flipped classroom for doctoral students: evaluating the effectiveness

Ksenia N. Volchenkova - Cand. Sci. (Education),

Assoc. Prof. of the Department of Foreign Languages

Abstract

flipped classroom program course

The demand of Industry 4.0 for creative researchers able to adopt to the changing world and think out of the box puts forward the question of education technologies used to prepare such specialists. Though many new education technologies have appeared recently their effectiveness has not yet been proved to be introduced into tertiary education in a large scale. The author presents the evidence for the flipped classroom technology effectiveness. The paper describes the rationale and content of the doctoral program course “English for Research Purposes” delivered using flipped classroom approach. The course was piloted in September-May, 2017/2018 academic year with 197 doctoral students participating. Both quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the flipped classroom was made. Direct education outcomes (students' scores at the end of the course and attendance rates) and indirect education outcomes (students' attitudes, perceptions, and feelings towards the course; students' empowerment and development in the course) were measured using analysis of variance with repeated measures and Likert Scale surveys. The results showed that a general increase in students' ratings of the effectiveness of the flipped classroom elements was observed during the course, the students' scores increased 11,3% in comparison with the results of the 2016/2017 academic year where a traditional approach was used. The results of the research can be used to modernize the education process of doctoral students' training based on flipped classroom technology both at the universities of Russian Federation and at foreign universities.

Keywords: Education 4.0, education technology, flipped classroom, doctoral students, study modules, language learning

Аннотация

«Перевёрнутый класс» для аспирантов: оценка эффективности

Волченкова Ксения Николаевна - канд. пед. наук, доцент Южно-Уральский государственный университет

Потребность индустрии 4.0 в творческих исследователях, способных адаптироваться в меняющемся мире и мыслить нестандартно, выдвигает на первый план вопрос об образовательных технологиях, используемых для подготовки таких специалистов. Несмотря на то, что в последнее время появилось много новых образовательных технологий, их эффективность не всегда доказана для широкого внедрения в систему высшего образования. В статье в рамках обучения аспирантов 1-2-х курсов иностранному языку обоснована и доказана эффективность технологии «перевёрнутый класс». Автором описывается внедрение технологии в курс обучения «Английский язык для научных целей», апробация которого прошла в 2017/2018 учебном году с участием 197 аспирантов. Количественная и качественная оценка эффективности технологии «перевёрнутого класса» показала, что не только повысились результаты обучения (сценки студентов в конце курса, показатели посещаемости), но и улучшилось отношение аспирантов к предмету. Отношение аспирантов измерялось с помощью дисперсионного анализа и проведением опросов по шкале Лайкерта. Результаты обучения студентов увеличились на 11,3% по сравнению с результатами 2016/2017 учебного года, когда применялся традиционный подход. Результаты исследования можно использовать для модернизации обучения аспирантов иностранному языку с применением технологии «перевёрнутого класса» как в вузах Российской Федерации, так и в зарубежных вузах.

Ключевые слова.: образование 4.0, технология обучения, технология «перевёрнутый класс», подготовка аспирантов, English for Research Purposes, учебные модули, оценка эффективности

The main text

Nowadays most educators realize that, whereas in industrial society the focus of education was to contribute to the development of factual and procedural knowledge, in the digital era, with all the innovations introduced by the fourth industrial revolution, the development of conceptual and metacognitive knowledge is becoming crucial. A key instructive reaction to constant change is to center the education process on building up the skills and attitudes that give future innovators and researchers the necessary tools to adapt to novel, complex conditions. Consequently, a change of education paradigm has been proclaimed and the need for the development of new education technologies has been recognized. However, tertiary education is too slow to introduce innovations into the education process because of a number of factors. They are: lack of investment, obsolete IT facilities, not enough number of tech savvy specialists among the academic staff, and resistance to change, to name a few. The task of the educators in the situation is to turn challenges into opportunities and to find the technologies that will equip future researchers with the necessary skills in conditions of resource scarcity.

The conceptual framework of education technologies 4.0 is emerging and the literature on the topic is diverse. Some researchers connect the future of education with the advances in neuroscience supposing that knowledge of how the brain works will improve classroom practices and enhance learning. However, most experts are cautious about the implications of neuroscience for teaching [1]. U. Goswami states: “there is a gulf between current science and direct classroom applications” [2]. The Society for Neuroscience's Education Summit Report reports: "... it is clear that brain science is not the driving force behind improving education practices” [3].

The majority of educators concentrate on modifying the classical teaching methods like interactive learning. Some of them investigate the promising methods that embrace mobile and Internet technologies like blended learning and flipped classroom [4-6], others develop new forms of cooperative learning like peer learning admitting the unused potential of learning from people who are equal to each other [7; 8]. For the purpose of our research we evaluated the effectiveness of a flipped classroom technology as it is both innovative for Russian system of tertiary education and promising in terms of constant development triggered by the advances in IT.

The paper presents a theoretical analysis and practical evaluation of the flipped classroom as a mode of blended learning. It describes the didactic possibilities of flipped learning for doctoral students, outlines the realization of the flipped learning approach in the form of an online course developed and evaluates the results of its piloting in Autumn-Spring 2017/2018 at South Ural State University.

The concept of flipped classroom

Flipped classroom approach presupposes that “what is done at school done at home, homework done at home completed in class” [5]. In a traditional flipped classroom approach students come to class by watching the lecture video of previous night or studying the materials assigned by the instructor. A lesson starts with short questions and answers to check students' comprehension. The rest of the time, the lecturer creates activities to develop high cognitive skills and provides support to students. Flipping the classroom is emerging as a unique approach to improving learner retention and transfer, and making efficient use of class time. M.D. Estes, R. Ingram, J.C. Liu highlight that the essence of flipped learning is that this student-centered approach places the “burden” of active learning squarely on the shoulders of the student. Students in the flipped classroom are expected to show initiative, be proactive, inquire, collaborate, and contribute new knowledge in observable ways [9].

Flipped classroom approach proved to be efficient in the literature. In the study at the University of Michigan A. Berrett describes a flipping approach for an introductory calculus course. Compared to the results obtained in the traditional course, students in the flipped course “were able to make gains at twice the rate” [10].

Proponents of the flipped classroom present several advantages of the approach. J. Enfield notifies the flexibility and individualization of the flipped model as students can access lecture videos whenever and wherever they want, and they can learn at their own speed. Students appreciate the ability to view videos at their convenience and pace [11]. Another critical thing is that the approach increases the interactive period within the class. N. Milman [12] argues that the most important benefit of flipped learning approach is to support team working within class, while J. Enfield [11] refers to this advantage as the collaborative nature of the flipped classroom providing students with various skills and abilities to learn from and support each other.

Though flipped classroom is a promising approach it has some pitfalls in implementation. Researchers admit the significant amount of time needed to prepare videos, and the low motivation of students to change the format of study and take the responsibility for their own learning.

Moreover, planning for effective in-class activities is vital but may prove challenging for faculty comfortable with a traditional style of lecture. Another issue is the digital divide as to view videos may be a challenge for economically disadvantaged students. Furthermore, video quality may be poor, and students may not understand the video content and may be unprepared for learning activities. Nevertheless, the advantages of flipped learning overweigh its disadvantages, and with time will help to raise the quality of content delivery. Nevertheless, flipped classroom might become an effective education technology for doctoral students as they are future researchers and they need to develop a certain set of skills mastered through self-paced and deep learning.

Doctoral students' needs analysis

The demand for doctoral students has increased lately in the academic environment, though C. Schroeder [13] believes that most doctoral students are now unable to cope with abstract ideas and are less independent in thought and judgment. Many doctoral students enter postgraduate studies with some basic research skills, but still they have low level of cognitive academic thinking skills, critical reading and writing skills required for postgraduate scholarly writing and speaking. While A. Brew states that academic staff expect postgraduate students “already have had considerable experience in investigation, in project research, and in inquiry based learning” [14], the real situation requires additional training for doctoral students to meet the expectations. This can result in a gap between the expectations of academic staff and the actual performance of the students, which has been linked by A. Froese, B. Gantz and F. Henry [15] to poor instructional delivery.

The gap even becomes wider when the necessity to demonstrate the research skills in English arises. Doctoral students lack the knowledge of English. They all come with different backgrounds and different experience of using English. Moreover, 76% of doctoral students at South Ural State University have low command of English, 67% of postgraduates have a vague idea of what research skills they need to master to succeed in their study. Concerns about the difficulties found by many doctoral students in writing and communicating pose a greater challenge at the postgraduate level. Novice researchers with a research-oriented profile require not only effective writing and speaking competencies, but also a comprehensive understanding of academic public speaking techniques, the scientific publication process, genre conventions of research articles, publication ethics, and the evolving information technology tools for literature analysis and organization.

Much has been done in Russian system of tertiary education to introduce academic writing in doctoral studies curriculum and to support young researchers in their publishing activities with several MOOCs developed on Coursera platform available for a wide audience [16]. A network of Centers of Academic Writing (CAWs) has been established at leading universities that turned into the Consortium of CAW's. The Consortium aims to create a professional network of experts in academic writing; to support the creation of new CAW's; to extend experience of the best practices in academic writing training; to initiate projects in academic writing by attracting grants and subsidies of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation; to develop national standards in academic writing training; to inform the academic community on the events of Consortium and increase awareness in academic writing on the territory of the Russian Federation [17]. Still academic writing is an emerging field of study in Russian tertiary education and needs a thorough interdisciplinary research embracing Linguistics, Philology, Rhetoric, Logic and Philosophy [18]

The research of Russian scholars in academic writing and the results of the doctoral students' needs analysis made us rethink the format, delivery and content of the English language course for doctoral students. To develop the course content the survey of 197 doctoral students enrolled in 2016/2017 academic year was conducted. The aim was to define the needs the doctoral students have. The results show that though 100% of doctoral students admit that in the near future they plan to write papers in English for peer-reviewed journals and participate in international conferences they are unaware of the basic concepts of critical reading and writing strategies. They lack internet research skills, they do not know what criteria to use to evaluate information, how to spot logical fallacies and how to make your message clear and understandable even to a layman, that is how to adjust your speech to the audience.

As educators we realize that it is beyond the scope of English language instruction to develop the whole set of skills a scientist needs but the very nature of language as the means of communication and the basic way to articulate ideas is the rationale for integrating transferable research skills into language learning. Transferable skills naturally developed by learning the language are the analytic and communication ones. Analytic skills: to synthesize and understand complex content, problem-solving tools and experience; to see the big picture while still retaining attention to details; to use advanced research methods/skills; to make decisions consistently about abstract information (grading); to exercise good judgment. Communication skills: to coherently organize material; to write at different levels: from brief abstracts/book reviews to book-length manuscripts; to write successful grant/fellowship proposals and secure funding; to edit and proofread academic texts; to verbally convey complex information to nonexpert audience; to speak before large groups; to facilitate discussions, to speak up new ideas.

These are the transferable skills to be focused in the course «English for Research Purposes» that has been devised to bridge the gap between the underdeveloped research skills of doctoral students and the expectations of their scientific advisors.

Doctoral students' course content

The learning objective of the course is to develop transferable research skills in doctoral students by means of English language instruction in a flipped classroom. A set of learning outcomes has been identified to reach this objective:

*/ students will learn how to read critically: define premise, conclusion, logic fallacies; evaluate argument; learn the ways to develop paragraph; analyze the content of paragraph; define indicator words;

*/ students will gain competency in presenting and discussing research ideas at international conferences; create various types of oral presentations: reports, elevator speeches; learn how to chair a meeting;

*/ students will be able to find relevant and reliable references according to indicators in research databases for a subject of interest; students will be able to prepare a paper with an appropriate structure, writing style, and ethical considerations required by scientific publishing; students will demonstrate substantial knowledge of peer-review criteria to review works by others and to exercise self-criticism.

To achieve the learning outcomes the course design requires intensive online practice in addition to classroom activities. As the course presupposes the development of the research skills of three types, namely, critical reading skills, academic speaking skills and academic writing skills, the appropriate content for each module has been developed and it is presented in Table 1.

The course «English for Research Purposes» is organized into three modules developed for three terms - each term is 36 hours of classroom work and 36 hours of self-study online work, which makes the 208 hours of learning activities. The first module deals with developing critical reading skills. The second module introduces students the strategies to present at international conferences. The third module is developed to study how to write scientific texts. Table 1 shows the distribution of activities and the content of each module.

The flipped learning approach that we used can be called a modified version of the classical model. The difference is that videos were not the only type of material used as pre-class ac-

Table 1

Content of the course modules

Quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the flipped classroom approach was made. The author adopted a mixed approach in evaluat-

Table 3

Average passing grade and improvement comparison