Useful insights are provided in this experience report of flipping four computing courses to provide active learning in the classroom. Table 1 provides an overview of the principal elements involved in the flipping of the courses: the preparatory work required by students, the source of video material, in-class activities, the approach to group work, and the time taken to curate or create from scratch video material.
Section 5.4 warns that even curating video material can take a significant amount of time. Also, curated video material does not always present a topic at a conceptual level nor address common misunderstandings that students have. Section 6.2 provides a useful description of the different ways of making use of in-class quizzes. The experience report makes clear that flipping a course involves at least the same effort as developing a traditional course from scratch.
The results of 13 Likert-type questions on a post-course survey are given in Table 3. Though the majority of responding students were positive about the flipped course approach, the highest mean score of any question was only 5.35 on a 7-point rating scale. Answers to open-ended questions reveal that a minority of students wanted more in-class lecturing. Some researchers would feel it was remiss of the authors not to have revealed the size of this minority. In their conclusions, the authors draw attention to the need for future work to address controlled comparisons of grade performance and academic progression.
This experience report is very strongly recommended to computer science faculty.