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Sarah E. Zappe

Bio: Sarah E. Zappe is an academic researcher from Pennsylvania State University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Engineering education & Entrepreneurship. The author has an hindex of 15, co-authored 94 publications receiving 1125 citations.


Papers
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Journal Article
TL;DR: The authors made recommendations for applying flipped classes to large engineering classrooms based both on a literature review of flipped classes and the evaluation of a case study of a large Introduction to Environmental Engineering class.
Abstract: Engineering students benefit from an active and interactive classroom environment where they can be guided through the problem solving process. Typically faculty members spend class time presenting the technical content required to solve problems, leaving students to apply this knowledge and problem solve on their own at home. There has recently been a surge of the flipped, or inverted, classroom where the technical content is delivered via online videos before class. Students then come to class prepared to actively apply this knowledge to solve problems or do other activities. In this paper, recommendations are made for applying this educational technique to large engineering classrooms. These recommendations are based both on a literature review of flipped classes and the evaluation of a case study of a large Introduction to Environmental Engineering class. The case study evolved from a traditional lecture-based classroom through two different versions of a flipped classroom. Evaluation of students’ interaction, preferences and performance are used to make rec ommendations about the video time, use of class time, course organization and student assessment.

134 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It was found that the weak, and most of the strong problem solvers relied heavily on memory to decide what reactions were present at a given connection, and few of the students could reason physically about what reactions should be present.
Abstract: Background Even as expectations for engineers continue to evolve to meet global challenges, analytical problem solving remains a central skill. Thus, improving students' analytical problem solving skills remains an important goal in engineering education. This study involves observation of students as they execute the initial steps of an engineering problem solving process in statics. Purpose (Hypothesis) (1) What knowledge elements do statics students have the greatest difficulty applying during problem solving? (2) Are there differences in the knowledge elements that are accurately applied by strong and weak statics students? (3) Are there differences in the cognitive and metacognitive strategies used by strong and weak statics students during analysis? Design/Method These questions were addressed using think-aloud sessions during which students solved typical textbook problems. We selected the work of twelve students for detailed analysis, six weak and six strong problem solvers, using an extreme groups split based on scores on the think-aloud problems and a course exam score. The think-aloud data from the two sets of students were analyzed to identify common technical errors and also major differences in the problem solving processes. Conclusions We found that the weak, and most of the strong problem solvers relied heavily on memory to decide what reactions were present at a given connection, and few of the students could reason physically about what reactions should be present. Furthermore, the cognitive analysis of the students' problems solving processes revealed substantial differences in the use of self-explanation by weak and strong students.

97 citations

01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: In this article, an instructional technique called the "classroom flip" model was assessed in a larger, undergraduate architectural engineering class, where lecture content was removed from the classroom to allow time for active learning, and the content that was removed is delivered to students via on-line video.
Abstract: In traditional approaches to teaching engineering classes, the instructor plays the role of information conveyor, while the students assume a receiver role with primary responsibilities of listening and note-taking. Research into how students learn suggests that students need to be more actively engaged with the course material to maximize their understanding. The literature contains many examples of active learning strategies, such as teams solving problems in class and the use of student response systems with conceptual questions. Incorporating active learning strategies into a class means that there will be less time for delivering material via lecture. Therefore, instructors who choose to utilize active learning strategies must find ways to ensure that all required course content is still addressed. This paper discusses an instructional technique called the “classroom flip” model which was assessed in a larger, undergraduate architectural engineering class. In this model, lecture content is removed from the classroom to allow time for active learning, and the content that was removed is delivered to students via on-line video. This approach ‘flips’ the traditional use of lecture and more active learning approaches. Lecture occurs outside of class, and more active learning, such as problem solving, happens during class. Assessment data was collected to examine students’ use of the video lectures and perceptions of the classroom flip. The students’ feedback suggests that while the active learning and additional project time available in class improved their understanding, they would prefer that only about half the classes be flipped and some use of traditional lectures should be maintained. Introduction Engineering instructors are often encouraged to try instructional techniques that encourage their students to be more actively engaged with course material. Active learning is defined by the engineering education community as the “involvement of students in their own learning.” 1 Active learning encompasses a variety of instructional techniques, in which students participate in activities during class time that involve more than passive listening. Active learning techniques include in-class group work, think-pair-share, “clicker” questions using student response systems, and minute papers. Active learning is necessary in order to increase understanding and for enhancing problem solving skills. The National Research Council has stated that “...the new science of learning is beginning to provide knowledge to improve significantly people’s abilities to become active learners who seek to understand complex subject matter and are better prepared to transfer what they have learned to new problems and settings” (p. 13) 2 However, many instructors still utilize class time for lecture and are concerned that active learning consumes valuable time that is needed to cover material. The lecture method is often used as the primary method to make sure P ge 14385.2 that material is covered. However, the lecture method may not be the most effective way to ensure student understanding. As Felder (2003) states, “You have roughly 40 contact hours in a typical course. If all you do in them is lecture, you might as well just hand out your notes and let the students find something more productive to do with all that time.” 3 Research has supported that active learning strategies result in higher student engagement and greater learning gains as compared to traditional instructor-centered methods such as lecture. 4 Even with the mounting evidence on the effectiveness of active learning strategies, instructors still struggle with this balance of engaging students and covering important material, especially in larger classrooms. One method that allows instructors to include active learning elements without sacrificing course content is called the “classroom flip” or the “inverted classroom.” 5 The classroom flip utilizes the internet to place substantial amounts of class material online, often in video format as a “virtual lecture.” Students are then asked to use out-of-class time to watch the lectures. Recent technology has made inverting the classroom easier for faculty and more accessible by students. 6 Software programs such as Camtasia Studio, Adobe Captivate, Camstudio, and UltraVNC Screen Recorder, to name a few, allow instructors to record spoken voice and/or video while also capturing on-screen materials such as software demonstrations, worked problems, or PowerPoint slides. In addition, the use of classroom management systems, such as Web CT, Blackboard, and ANGEL, makes the uploading of the class materials easy and secure. By requiring students to access the “virtual lectures,” the instructor can spend valuable class-time leading students in engaging activities without sacrificing time that is needed to cover course content. In the classroom flip method, the role of the instructor shifts. No longer is the instructor the “sage on the stage” in which the primary role is to transmit information during class time. Rather, the student must take initiative during his or her own time to prepare for class. Class-time can then be devoted to other types of activities. 7 Particularly in the engineering domain, students need sufficient time to be able to practice problem-solving. Flipping the class provides additional time for the students to work out problems, while having the instructor there as a guide if needed. In order to ensure that students do indeed access the online lectures, instructors need to implement a sort of “gate-check” such as a pre-class quiz that tests students’ understanding of the material. These online quizzes serve multiple purposes. First, having online quizzing increases the likelihood that students will use out-of-class time to watch the videos in order to learn the material necessary to be successful in the quizzes. This helps to assure that students will be prepared for the in-class activities. Second, the instructor can use the results of the quizzes as a launching point for discussion and adjust the class plan as necessary to address any student misconceptions or lack of understanding, in a form of just-in-time teaching. 8 The classroom flip method may be perceived to be particularly beneficial to students who prefer certain types of learning environments. According to the Felder-Solomon Learning Styles Index, students may classify themselves along four dimensions as being a certain type of learner: active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, and sequential/global. 9,10 The classroom flip allows for a more active engagement, which may be a more conducive learning environment for those students who consider themselves to be active learners. The use of more active methods in P ge 14385.3 the classroom may also potentially expand the skills of other students who have other types of learning styles. This paper discusses the use of the classroom flip strategy in an architectural engineering course at Penn State University. Assessment data were collected to explore student perceptions of the classroom flip and to examine how students used the video lectures. Context of Study In the spring of 2008, the classroom flip was used in a large undergraduate Architectural Engineering course entitled “Introduction to the Building Industry.” The objective of the course is for students to be able to learn and apply methods for organizing and managing construction projects. The course combines business concepts, such as contracting methods and project organization, with problem solving topics like cost estimating and critical path method scheduling. The course enrolls approximately 100 students each semester that it is offered. It consists of two 50-minute lecture periods and one 110 minute practicum weekly. In 2007, the instructor of the course started using iTunesU to post video-records of lecture material so that students would be able to review lectures and supplemental content. Students were open to the use of the recorded lectures, as supported by preliminary assessment data shown in Figure 1. The instructor of the course wanted to take the next step and flip the course for a variety of reasons. First, the availability of online lectures would allow students to be exposed to theory-based content outside of class time. Taking the lecture out of class would allow greater time for in-class problem solving and increase the opportunity for increased teacher-student interaction. In addition, the use of the practicum period, which had previously been used to deliver course content, could be used for students to work on group projects, with the instructor available for assistance and guidance. Figure 1: Feedback regarding the interest in the use of iTunesU for posting lecture content. The classroom flip method was used for cost estimating, one of three main topics in the course. Having the iTunesU video content from the 2007 offering of the course enabled the instructor to take the previous year’s lecture content, edit the video to provide specific course content, and P ge 14385.4 post the videos for students to watch before attending class. To help ensure that the students watched the posted videos, online quizzes were utilized. The method was piloted with one lecture topic well in advance of the cost estimating topics to ensure students could access the video and to test the process of editing, posting, and providing access to the video. The first video was 50 minutes in duration; the other videos for the estimating topics were shortened to 25 to 30 minutes each based on feedback from students. The online quizzes and videos were made available to the students, who were then expected to watch the video and read any related materials from the text in preparation for taking the quiz and attending the class. Videos were not posted in advance of every lecture period, but were used typically once per week to match sub-t

51 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Modular Curriculum for Hydrologic Advancement (MOCHA) project as discussed by the authors aims at developing a community-driven basis for hydrology education, which can be used to train a new generation of "renaissance hydrologists" who can master the holistic nature of our field and of the problems we encounter.
Abstract: Protection from hydrological extremes and the sustainable supply of hydrological services in the presence of changing climate and lifestyles as well as rocketing pop- ulation pressure in many parts of the world are the defining societal challenges for hydrology in the 21st century. A re- view of the existing literature shows that these challenges and their educational consequences for hydrology were fore- seeable and were even predicted by some. However, surveys of the current educational basis for hydrology also clearly demonstrate that hydrology education is not yet ready to pre- pare students to deal with these challenges. We present our own vision of the necessary evolution of hydrology educa- tion, which we implemented in the Modular Curriculum for Hydrologic Advancement (MOCHA). The MOCHA project is directly aimed at developing a community-driven basis for hydrology education. In this paper we combine literature re- view, community survey, discussion and assessment to pro- vide a holistic baseline for the future of hydrology education. The ultimate objective of our educational initiative is to en- able educators to train a new generation of "renaissance hy- drologists," who can master the holistic nature of our field and of the problems we encounter.

42 citations


Cited by
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The analysis supports theory claiming that calls to increase the number of students receiving STEM degrees could be answered, at least in part, by abandoning traditional lecturing in favor of active learning and supports active learning as the preferred, empirically validated teaching practice in regular classrooms.
Abstract: creased by 0.47 SDs under active learning (n = 158 studies), and that the odds ratio for failing was 1.95 under traditional lecturing (n = 67 studies). These results indicate that average examination scores improved by about 6% in active learning sections, and that students in classes with traditional lecturing were 1.5 times more likely to fail than were students in classes with active learning. Heterogeneity analyses indicated that both results hold across the STEM disciplines, that active learning increases scores on concept inventories more than on course examinations, and that active learning appears effective across all class sizes—although the greatest effects are in small (n ≤ 50) classes. Trim and fill analyses and fail-safe n calculations suggest that the results are not due to publication bias. The results also appear robust to variation in the methodological rigor of the included studies, based on the quality of controls over student quality and instructor identity. This is the largest and most comprehensive metaanalysis of undergraduate STEM education published to date. The results raise questions about the continued use of traditional lecturing as a control in research studies, and support active learning as the preferred, empirically validated teaching practice in regular classrooms.

5,474 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2001
TL;DR: A wide variety of media can be used in learning, including distance learning, such as print, lectures, conference sections, tutors, pictures, video, sound, and computers.
Abstract: A wide variety of media can be used in learning, including distance learning, such as print, lectures, conference sections, tutors, pictures, video, sound, and computers. Any one instance of distance learning will make choices among these media, perhaps using several.

2,940 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Tamar Frankel1
TL;DR: The Essay concludes that practitioners theorize, and theorists practice, use these intellectual tools differently because the goals and orientations of theorists and practitioners, and the constraints under which they act, differ.
Abstract: Much has been written about theory and practice in the law, and the tension between practitioners and theorists. Judges do not cite theoretical articles often; they rarely "apply" theories to particular cases. These arguments are not revisited. Instead the Essay explores the working and interaction of theory and practice, practitioners and theorists. The Essay starts with a story about solving a legal issue using our intellectual tools - theory, practice, and their progenies: experience and "gut." Next the Essay elaborates on the nature of theory, practice, experience and "gut." The third part of the Essay discusses theories that are helpful to practitioners and those that are less helpful. The Essay concludes that practitioners theorize, and theorists practice. They use these intellectual tools differently because the goals and orientations of theorists and practitioners, and the constraints under which they act, differ. Theory, practice, experience and "gut" help us think, remember, decide and create. They complement each other like the two sides of the same coin: distinct but inseparable.

2,077 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
23 Jun 2013
TL;DR: The flipped classroom is a new pedagogical method, which employs asynchronous video lectures and practice problems as homework, and active, group-based problem solving activities in the classroom as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Recent advances in technology and in ideology have unlocked entirely new directions for education research. Mounting pressure from increasing tuition costs and free, online course offerings is opening discussion and catalyzing change in the physical classroom. The flipped classroom is at the center of this discussion. The flipped classroom is a new pedagogical method, which employs asynchronous video lectures and practice problems as homework, and active, group-based problem solving activities in the classroom. It represents a unique combination of learning theories once thought to be incompatible—active, problem-based learning activities founded upon a constructivist ideology and instructional lectures derived from direct instruction methods founded upon behaviorist principles. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of prior and ongoing research of the flipped classroom. Studies are characterized on several dimensions. Among others, these include the type of in-class and out-of-class activities, the measures used to evaluate the study, and methodological characteristics for each study. Results of this survey show that most studies conducted to date explore student perceptions and use single-group study designs. Reports of student perceptions of the flipped classroom are somewhat mixed, but are generally positive overall. Students tend to prefer in-person lectures to video lectures, but prefer interactive classroom activities over lectures. Anecdotal evidence suggests that student learning is improved for the flipped compared to traditional classroom. However, there is very little work investigating student learning outcomes objectively. We recommend for future work studies investigating of objective learning outcomes using controlled experimental or quasi-experimental designs. We also recommend that researchers carefully consider the theoretical framework used to guide the design of in-class activities. 1 The Rise of the Flipped Classroom There are two related movements that are combining to change the face of education. The first of these is a technological movement. This technological movement has enabled the amplification and duplication of information at an extremely low-cost. It started with the printing press in the 1400s, and has continued at an ever-increasing rate. The electronic telegraph came in the 1830s, wireless radio in the late 1800s and early 1900s, television in the 1920s, computers in the 1940s, the internet in the 1960s, and the world-wide web in the 1990s. As these technologies have been adopted, the ideas that have been spread through their channels have enabled a second movement. Whereas the technological movement sought to overcome real physical barriers to the free and open flow of information, this ideological movement seeks to remove the artificial, man-made barriers. This is epitomized in the free software movement (see, e.g., Stallman and Lessig [67]), although this movement is certainly not limited to software. A good example of this can be seen from the encyclopedia. Encyclopedia Britannica has been P ge 23200.2 continuously published for nearly 250 years [20] (since 1768). Although Encyclopedia Britannica content has existed digitally since 1981, it was not until the advent of Wikipedia in 2001 that open access to encyclopedic content became available to users worldwide. Access to Encyclopedia Britannica remains restricted to a limited number of paid subscribers [21], but access to Wikipedia is open, and the website receives over 2.7 billion US monthly page views [81]. Thus, although the technology and digital content was available to enable free access to encyclopedic content, ideological roadblocks prevented this from happening. It was not until these ideologies had been overcome that humanity was empowered to create what has become the world’s largest, most up-to-date encyclopedia [81]. In a similar way, we are beginning to see the combined effects of these two movements on higher education. In the technological arena, research has made significant advances. Studies show that video lectures (slightly) outperform in-person lectures [9], with interactive online videos doing even better (Effect size=0.5) [83,51]. Online homework is just as effective as paper-and-pencil homework [8,27], and carefully developed intelligent tutoring systems have been shown to be just as effective as human tutors [77]. Despite these advancements, adoption has been slow, as the development of good educational systems can be prohibitively expensive. However, the corresponding ideological movement is breaking down these financial barriers. Ideologically, MIT took a significant step forward when it announced its OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative in 2001 [53]. This opened access to information that had previously only been available to students who paid university tuition, which is over $40,000/yr at MIT [54]. Continuing this trend, MIT alum Salman Khan founded the Khan Academy in 2006, which has released a library of over 3200 videos and 350 practice exercises 2012. The stated mission of the Khan Academy is to provide “a free world-class education to anyone anywhere2012.” In the past year, this movement has rapidly gained momentum. Inspired by Khan’s efforts, Stanford professors Sebastian Thrun and Andrew Ng opened access to their online courses in Fall 2011. Thrun taught artificial intelligence with Peter Norvig, attracting over 160,000 students to their free online course. Subsequently, Thrun left the university and founded Udacity, which is now hosting 11 free courses [76]. With support from Stanford, Ng also started his own open online educational initiative, Coursera. Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan have joined the Coursera partnership, which has expanded its offerings to 42 courses [10]. MIT has also upgraded its open educational initiative, and joined with Harvard in a $60 million dollar venture, edX [19]. EdX will, “offer Harvard and MIT classes online for free.” While online education is improving, expanding, and becoming openly available for free, university tuition at brick-and-mortar schools is rapidly rising [56]. Tuition in the University of California system has nearly tripled since 2000 [32]. Naturally, this is not being received well by university students in California [2]. Likewise, students in Quebec are actively protesting planned tuition hikes [13]. In resistance to planned tuition hikes, student protestors at Rutgers interrupted (on June 20, 2012) a board meeting to make their voices heard [36]. Adding fuel to the fire, results from a recent study by Gillen et al. [31] indicate that undergraduate student tuition is used to subsidize research. As a result, the natural question being asked by both students and educational institutions is exactly what students are getting for their money. This is applying a certain pressure on physical academic institutions to improve and enhance the in-person educational experience of their P ge 23200.3

1,997 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: This study reviews several of the most commonly used inductive teaching methods, including inquiry learning, problem-based learning, project-basedLearning, case-based teaching, discovery learning, and just-in-time teaching, and defines each method, highlights commonalities and specific differences, and reviews research on the effectiveness.
Abstract: Traditional engineering instruction is deductive, beginning with theories and progressing to the applications of those theories Alternative teaching approaches are more inductive Topics are introduced by presenting specific observations, case studies or problems, and theories are taught or the students are helped to discover them only after the need to know them has been established This study reviews several of the most commonly used inductive teaching methods, including inquiry learning, problem-based learning, project-based learning, case-based teaching, discovery learning, and just-in-time teaching The paper defines each method, highlights commonalities and specific differences, and reviews research on the effectiveness of the methods While the strength of the evidence varies from one method to another, inductive methods are consistently found to be at least equal to, and in general more effective than, traditional deductive methods for achieving a broad range of learning outcomes

1,673 citations