Active Learning Blog

Dismantling Traditional Lecture Education with New Technology

Jul 1, 2015 7:00:00 AM by Fred Krazeise

Technology in the classroom seems cutting-edge, but is it really an effective way to teach students, or are educators simply jumping on board the latest band wagon? The best place to test new teaching technology is in one of the least personal classrooms - the large lecture class on a college campus. In 2013, Associate Professor Brent Stockwell took his 180-student biochemistry class and flipped it. His results, which Campus Technology recently reported, showed the potential for technology in the classroom.

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The Setup

In order to make his flipped classroom effective, Professor Stockwell recorded his lectures, using slide show presentations and notes to keep students engaged while they watched. He then attached a quiz to each lecture, and the quizzes counted towards the students' grades. When the students came to class, he used groups to break down the 180 students into smaller sections, and gave each group problems to solve during the classroom time.

The Results

At the end of the course, Professor Stockwell found that his students had a far deeper mastery of the course material than past students had achieved. He was convinced of the model and used it a second year to teach another class. He also pulled ideas from other biochemistry professors for problems and scenarios that students could solve during their classroom work, helping him overcome the challenge of a lack of critical thinking questions built into the coursework designed for a traditional classroom environment.

What This Means for Modern Education

What do results like this mean for the modern educator? If an educator in a classroom of nearly 200 students can flip the classroom and achieve excellent results, then new teaching technology and flipped classrooms are something all educators should be considering. With the help of technology like Echo360, modern educators can create an engaging, fully flipped classroom, even in light of some of the challenges faced by making this change. If you are an educator considering embracing new technology-driven pedagogies like the flipped classroom, a comprehensive active learning solution that marries lecture capture with student engagement and learning analytics is a great place to start.