Teaching with the Flipped Classroom Model!

Statistics, a branch of mathematics, plays a central role in many fields of study, including the social sciences. However, many students who attend statistics courses experience feelings more of horror than of joy. In addition, students who fail in these courses often have to drop out. The present concept presents different teaching methods in an attempt to constantly improve the statistics courses and increase the quality of teaching. A key component is the analysis of didactic concepts and expert interviews. Prof. Spannagel, an expert on mathematical didactics, is well known in Germany as a pioneer of flipped classrooms. In an interview, he explained the method, and sparked my interest. It seemed time to test the concept of flipped classrooms.

Instead of face-to-face (or frontal) teaching, video lessons are made available to students as preparation for the course. Seminars give students the chance to work with others—for example, it helps them solve tasks and take part in discussions. Additionally, the learning platform records the meetings, and gives numerous exercises and self-tests.

In order to evaluate the concept, the choice fell on a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods: Guided interviews and standardized questionnaires. The first results show a positive picture: For all the seminar participants who were questioned, the self-learning phase posed no problem. They all had had a look at all videos before the presence phase.

The free time division did not cause any difficulties. For example the students were able to make their ideas clear without asking questions, as is otherwise usually done in seminars. The concept seems to be suited to students with good as well as poor knowledge of mathematics. With the videos, the inhibition threshold in dealing with statistics apparently sinks, even though it is judged to be difficult.