Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (4 results)

  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2016)

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the effects of flipped instruction on student exam performance, motivation, and perceptions. Flipped instruction was implemented in three consecutive years in the same introductory chemistry course taught by the same instructor. Surveys were delivered to measure out-of-class study time, student motivation, perceived instruction clarity and quality. Our studies have consistently shown that flipped instruction did not appreciably increase students’ overall study time outside the classroom. It only causes a shift in student workload. Our first study shows that flipped instruction had a small and statistically significant effect on student final exam performance with no marked interaction effect. Student responses to the flipped pedagogy was distinctly lukewarm with about one fifth of the students showing polarized feelings. Non-compliance with pre-class study was found to be a serious implementation issue, which might lead to the small treatment effect and absence of interaction. Giving assignments and quizzes associated with each video effectively reduced non-compliance, as shown by the second study. However, technological failures in class seemed to result in flipped students consistently rating the class to be of lower quality. Accordingly, flipped students were shown to underperform their control counterparts. Moreover, second-year students and females benefit more from flipped instruction. The variety of issues exposed during the first two years prompted us to reflect upon the resilience of traditional lectures, where its simplicity might be its greatest virtue. We therefore caution against over-reliance on complex technologies or teaching techniques. Finally, with non-compliance and technology failures solved, the third study adopted a softer approach to introducing flipped instruction by periodically adjusting the balance between lecturing and active learning components. Although the results showed no treatment effect on student final exam performance, students from the flipped section who enrolled into a subsequent course outperformed their control counterparts in post-course grade. Moreover, students with lower high school GPA to start with benefited more from the flipped pedagogy. Collectively speaking, it is advisable that flipped instructors in first-year introductory courses should start simple and be cautious of deviating from traditional lectures too much too fast.

    Cover page: Investigation of the Effects of Flipped Instruction on Student Exam Performance, Motivation and Perceptions
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2016)
    Primary literature offers rich opportunities to teach students how to think like a scientist, but the challenges students face when they attempt to read research articles are not well understood. Here, we present an analysis of what masters students perceive as the most challenging aspects of engaging with primary literature. We examined 69 pairs of pre- and postcourse responses from students enrolled in a masters-level course that offered a structured analysis of primary literature. On the basis of these responses, we identified six categories of challenges. Before instruction, techniques and experimental data were the most frequently identified categories of challenges. The majority of difficulties students perceived in the primary literature corresponded to Blooms lower-order cognitive skills. After instruction, conclusions were identified as the most difficult aspect of primary literature, and the frequency of challenges that corresponded to higher-order cognitive skills increased significantly among students who reported less experience with primary literature. These changes are consistent with a more competent perception of the primary literature, in which these students increasingly focus on challenges requiring critical thinking. Students difficulties identified here can inform the design of instructional approaches aimed to teach students how to critically read scientific papers.
      Cover page: Perceived Challenges in Primary Literature in a Masters Class: Effects of Experience and Instruction.
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2015)
      Undergraduate biology education is often viewed as being focused on memorization rather than development of students' critical-thinking abilities. We speculated that open-note testing would be an easily implemented change that would emphasize higher-order thinking. As open-note testing is not commonly used in the biological sciences and the literature on its effects in biology education is sparse, we performed a comprehensive analysis of this intervention on a primary literature-based exam across three large-enrollment laboratory courses. Although students believed open-note testing would impact exam scores, we found no effect on performance, either overall or on questions of nearly all Bloom's levels. Open-note testing also produced no advantage when examined under a variety of parameters, including research experience, grade point average, course grade, prior exposure to primary literature-focused laboratory courses, or gender. Interestingly, we did observe small differences in open- and closed-note exam performance and perception for students who experienced open-note exams for an entire quarter. This implies that student preparation or in-test behavior can be altered by exposure to open-note testing conditions in a single course and that -increased experience may be necessary to truly understand the impact of this intervention.
        Cover page: The grass isn't always greener: perceptions of and performance on open-note exams.
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2014)
        Primary literature is essential for scientific communication and is commonly utilized in undergraduate biology education. Despite this, there is often little time spent training our students how to critically analyze a paper. To address this, we introduced a primary literature module in multiple upper-division laboratory courses. In this module, instructors conduct classroom discussions that dissect a paper as researchers do. While previous work has identified classroom interventions that improve primary literature comprehension within a single course, our goal was to determine whether including a scientific paper module in our classes could produce long-term benefits. On the basis of performance in an assessment exam, we found that our module resulted in longitudinal gains, including increased comprehension and critical-thinking abilities in subsequent lab courses. These learning gains were specific to courses utilizing our module, as no longitudinal gains were seen in students who had taken other upper-division labs that lacked extensive primary literature discussion. In addition, we assessed whether performance on our assessment correlated with a variety of factors, including grade point average, course performance, research background, and self-reported confidence in understanding of the article. Furthermore, all of the study conclusions are independent of biology disciplines, as we observe similar trends within each course.
          Cover page: Practice makes pretty good: assessment of primary literature reading abilities across multiple large-enrollment biology laboratory courses.
          Top