Effectiveness of FC Pedagogy in the Course of the Brief Introduction to the British and American Culture

Northeast Normal University,Changchun,China Email:1477534527@qq.com

Zhang Weilun

Renmin University of China,Beijing,China Email:2236887538@qq.com

[Abstract]FC pedagogy has been popularly practiced in institutions of higher education,and proved to be beneficial and effective in Science Courses,whereas the similar research in social science courses has been sparse.This study focuses on the effectiveness of FC pedagogy in the course of the Brief Introduction to the British and American Culture by making comparison and contrast between performances of two groups of students(from FC teaching paradigm class versus None FC class),which proved the advantages and some limits of FC pedagogy in teaching this course.

[Keywords]effects;flipped classroom pedagogy;benefits:limits

Current status of FC pedagogy in higher education

The flipped classroom teaching pedagogy,FC pedagogy,is a comparatively new teaching approach which some people predict may replace the traditional classroom lecture(Fitzpatrick,2012; Rosenberg,2013).By this teaching method,students watch some teaching material or knowledge points in form of videoclips,or get knowledge in other way of learning before the class period so that more time can be spent efficiently in discussion,practice or figuring out problems or giving instruction during class period.

FC pedagogy has been popularly advocated,however research investigating its effectiveness has primarily examined the effectiveness of the flipped classroom in Science,Technology,Engineering,and Mathematics and quantitative courses(STEM-Q).(Patricia V.Roehling 1,Lindsey M.Root Luna1,Fallon J.Richie1,John J.Shaughnessy 1,2017)In social science education field,it has not been so popularly employed and research has been sparse.Study examining the effectiveness of the FC pedagogy in social cultural courses has been less by far,especially in field of English education in universities in China.

Although FC pedagogy has been advocated and widely practiced across China since 2013,few people has done research on the effectiveness of FC pedagogy in English teaching courses related to social science.Cross-cultural English teaching is important effective approach to improve English level of non-native English students via cultural courses related to English speaking countries.To improve teaching and learning effects we made experiment in the course of Brief Introduction to the British and American Culture and examined the difference between two classes,one class taught in FC pedagogy and the other taught in traditional teacher-centered lecture style.The aim of the current study is to analyze the impact of the FC pedagogy on students’learning and examination performance and their attitudes to this pedagogy.Findings suggested some advantages of FC pedagogy presented in students’academic report and improved class performance along with some limitations.

Method and Results

Traditionally,in the course of Brief Introduction to the British and Americ an Culture,to help students remember knowledge points efficiently,teachers regularly require students do some exercises related to the contents in each chapter after giving class,then check the answer at the beginning of next class,which can not only check how the students grasp the content of the previous class but also play the function of reviewing what was taught in last class so as to continue with new content more smoothly.However,quite some students do not complete the assignments timely and put off the task until immediately before examination,or just copy answers from classmates,which have negative effects on learning and exam performance.To solve the problem we made experiment by employing FC pedagogy in one class and make contrast between this one with the other traditionally taught class by the same teacher.The experiment on the FC class includes two parts.First,to improve students’efficiency on learning necessary knowledge points we required students do exercises before class and took quiz at beginning of each class to deepen their memory of those points.Second,we asked students to watch some videoclips before class and had further discussion,practice or presentation concerning the corresponding contents in class period.

Participants

Two classes of 60 undergraduates for each from different majors in Northeast Normal university in China participated in the study in spring term in 2018.The two classes were composed of freshmen sophomores and juniors with average age of 19 years old.The average college entrance English test scores for FC class was 108.1(full mark is 150),and 105.5 for the non-FC class,which generally reflected the students’basic English level were similar and comparatively good enough to learn the selective course.Both classes were taught by the same teacher with the same textbook.

Flipped Class of Exercises and Quizzes

Students in FC class were assigned to finish exercises related to each chapter from the text-book before class each week(except the first four weeks in the semester)so that they could have general idea of some important and necessary knowledge points about the content of the lecture in advance and more time could be saved for discussion in and presentation in class period.The electronic exercises were uploaded a week before the lecture onto the electronic Blackboard Teaching Assistance Platform.Students were required to finish the exercises online in spare time class before class.In each set of chapter exercises,there were about 10 multiple-choice questions,10 true or false questions and 10 blank filling questions,which covered basic knowledge points related to the content of the corresponding chapter,For example,in the chapter concerning the history of Britain in the two world wars,students had to know knowledge of primary elements like the time,place,important countries and important political figures involved in the events.the consequence and significance of the wars,etc.Knowledge points like that would be covered briefly in pre-class exercises in different forms of questions.And these questions were almost exactly the same as the questions in the exercises in textbook after each chapter to be finished by non-FC class students after each class.

The number of the questions differed for each chapter in accordance with the content.Students could get the right answer by reading through roughly the text book.They could try two attempts when doing the exercises within allotted time.After students finished the electronic paper and turned it in,they could see the points for their exercises performance as well as right answers automatically presented.

To prevent students from merely memorizing the correct answers by turning in the paper to get the right answer directly,the points they got for each set of exercise were recorded as 5% of the final course grade.To help students remember the useful points attentively,some of the questions in exercises were selected and assessed in the in-class quizzes before lecture or other class activities and the scores of the in-class quizzes were recorded as 10%of final examination for the course grade.

All the questions in the exercises were collected as a part of the question bank,from which most questions were assessed in the objective section on the final exam,though most questions appeared in the final exam paper were in different form.Scores of final exam contributed 60%of the final course grade.Therefore,how well students grasp the knowledge points directly related to the scores of their final examination and final course grade.

Results and Effects

The average correct answer rate of the FC class in the objective questions section in final exam paper was higher than the traditionally taught class.The former got average correctness rate 80%,while the latter got 75%,which showed the impact of the pre-class online exercises and in-class quizzes completion on final grades was significantly effective.

More than 80%of the objective questions in final examination paper overlapped with the exercises related to the content of each chapter.The non-FC class students also had to complete the same exercises,but in different ways.They listened to teacher’s lecture in class first and finished the corresponding exercises in text book after class,which were the same as the electronic ones uploaded onto the Bb Platform.But they could not get right answers automatically by turning in papers like the FC class students did on line.To make sure they completed the assignment of exercises,teacher checked the answers with students orally by randomly asking them presenting their answers at the beginning of the next class and recorded the response as part of the class performance taking up 5% of the final course grade.The scores of regular quizzes for every three chapters were also taken as 10%of the final course grade.The checking answer process could also play the function of reviewing the contents of last class.However,quite frequently,some students failed to give the right answer,or did not do the assigned exercises at all.The reason reported by some students in the later interview was that many students thought teacher could not possibly ask every student to answer the questions,so they could just wait for other people to give the answers passively without being embarrassed.

The different academic reports showed the required exercises and the accountability of the in-class quizzes in FC class had a significant effect on students’performance in the objective question section in final exam performance to compare with the non-FC class for some advantages of FC pedagogy.Firstly,students in FC class were encouraged or even forced to learn in a more gradual approach rather than concentrate their studying immediately before examinations.they were exposed to the knowledge repeatedly including pre-class exercises,in-class quizzes and teacher’s lecture.The consistent touching of the knowledge was more rewarding than simply studying for exams.Secondly,frequent quizzes over smaller amounts of information were beneficial to memorize points more firmly and made it easier for students to catch up with teacher with general idea of the content in class,most of which was closely related to online pre-class exercises.Thirdly,much time was saved for other tasks like presentation and discussion,which was helpful to learn in depth,thus to improve student performance in subjective question section in final exam paper.

Flipped Class of Videoclips Watching

In addition to pre-class exercises and in-class quizzes,we flipped the class in another way by making or selecting some videoclips covering certain knowledge points for students to watch before class aiming at saving time for students to have further discussion or other forms of practice in class thus to improve their critical thinking ,problem solving and cooperative ability.Each videoclip was about five minutes long,and students watched one or two videoclips before class.For the fourteen chapters in the whole semester,students had to watch videoclips for ten times.At the flipped class portion,students could engage in interactive class activities in pair work,groupwork or full class discussions.For example,students were asked to watch the videoclip about the idioms related to the Bible.After watching the videoclip they were asked to search the idioms from the Bible as many as possible on the internet and try to make clear the stories behind the idioms and how to use them correctly.In class period they presented the most useful idioms in group work or practiced using the idioms in different ways.

In the videoclip flipped class,students were comparatively more active in interactive activities,because they had more tasks to finish than students in traditionally taught class.They had to complete the tasks assigned at end of each videoclip.For example,after watching the videoclips of the Seven Years’War and the American Revolution,students were assigned to answer the question“What was the relation between the two wars?”They had to figure out the answer from different perspectives with their teammates and present the group work answer in speech with Power Point.The whole process could enhance students’ability to communicate with peers,to integrate knowledge,to solve problems and ability for public speaking,and helped them to learn in depth actively.The effectiveness of this videoclips FC pedagogy was also presented in their exam performance:the average scores of the FC class students in the subjective questions section was 17 points(full marks of this part was 20,correctness rate 85%),and 15.6 points for the traditionally taught class(correctness rate 78%).

Other advantages of the videoclips FC pedagogy in this course are:students could view the videoclips of learning material in small units repeatedly at their own pace conveniently with no limitation of time and space(Forsey,Low,&Glance,2013;Jensen,2011);teachers got more time to organize more advanced class activities.However there are also some limitations in it:some students thought the videoclips less engaging or efficient than reading material,though the videoclips were interesting; some thought pre-class task was time consuming burden,they prefer traditional spoon-feed teaching style,because they were not English majors; a few not self-disciplined students even did not complete any task before or class or after-class.

Students’Feedbacks in the Flipped Classroom

To assess students’attitudes toward the flipped classroom in this course,we made a survey in form of questionnaire and interview mainly focusing on questions:Whether the pre-class exercises and in-class quizzes were helpful in memorizing knowledge points? Whether videoclips flipped class were helpful in improving comprehensive ability in English learning?The results were encouraging.For the first question,55 of the 60 students(92%)in the survey on evaluation on FC pedagogy gave positive feedbacks; two students(3%)considered they played the same function in learning basic knowledge points as the paper version exercises in the textbook;two students(3%)reported they preferred the paper version exercises and traditional teacher checking answer style.For the second question,39 students(65%)thought the videoclips flipped class were more helpful in improving comprehensive English ability; 15 students(25%)slightly preferred the videoclips flipped class,but they also considered it time consuming burden,hoped to lower the frequency of the videoclips related assignments; six students(10%)preferred traditional lecture pedagogy and considered it more helpful in learning.Overall,the vast majority(93%)of students recommended using the flipped classroom teaching method to some degree.However most of them welcomed combination of flipped and traditional classroom pedagogy.

Conclusion and Suggestions

This study examined the effectiveness of the FC pedagogy employed in the course of Brief Introduction to the British and American Culture.The findings are encouraging in perspectives of students’better performance in examination,improved class activities and their feedbacks,which were similar to the flipped STEM-Q classes with consistently positive effect on student performance(e.g.,Deslaurierset al.,2011;McGivney-Burelle&Xue,2013;Stelzer et al.,2010;Wilson,2013).The success is encouraging that the FC pedagogy has the potential to be an effective teaching paradigm in all English social science courses for non-English majors.Considering its limitations,we suggest instructors use a combination of traditional lecture and flipped classroom and flip only one or two topics in class period instead of a entire class to release students’burden and improve learning efficiency in the videoclip part;instructors can design more questions to enrich the question bank and make the knowledge points more interesting and easier for retention.For better impact,teachers can encourage students to make full use of online resources and information out of class which can be achieved through quizzes or worksheets,as done by other researchers have included in their study design(e.g.,McLaughlin et al.,2014; Wilson,2013).With teachers’instruction,students will be more independent and responsible for their learning via pedagogy.

Acknowledgements

This paper is funded by The13th Five-year Plan in Education and Science Research of Jilin Province(Grant No.JJKH20170949SK and Grant No.JJKH20170956SK).