An Investigation Of Technology Design Features For Supporting Inverted Classroom Teaching
Open Access
- Author:
- Pena, Joslenne
- Graduate Program:
- Information Sciences and Technology
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- June 25, 2015
- Committee Members:
- Mary Beth Rosson, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
- Keywords:
- Inverted Classroom
Flipped Classroom
Education Technology
Scenario-based Design - Abstract:
- New technologies and teaching approaches are having enormous effects on education practices. The inverted classroom has emerged as an unconventional approach to structuring a classroom environment to enhance active learning. This model allows instructors to provide engaging content but also to cater to different learning styles by reserving significant amounts of classroom time for student interaction and problem solving. Many learning responsibilities are correspondingly shifted to the student, which leads to a sense of autonomy. The implementation of the inverted classroom pedagogy varies depending on the instructor, learning objectives, activities, content, and available teaching resources. Instructors use whatever technologies are provided to enable and complement this pedagogy; however, there has been no effort to analyze or design technologies that would be most appropriate for this teaching method. Instead, instructors turn towards a mix of external technologies, the learning and integration of which detracts from accomplishing other teaching tasks. In my first study, I used qualitative methods to study the practices of instructors using the inverted model, guided by Activity Theory as my theoretical lens. I found a number of themes pointing to a need for more flexibility and customization of the support tools. These early findings have led me to argue for the design of a system that could aid “inverted instructors” with their tasks and as a result help to transform the activity of teaching in this context. My second study was guided by my previous findings and used Scenario-Based Design (SBD) to create low-fidelity prototypes and scenarios that would allow me to explore my preliminary design ideas through participatory design sessions. I shared these design ideas with instructors, and use their feedback to refine my high-level design ideas that in the future will enable me to design and build a concrete artifact. In this thesis I describe the activity analysis and iterative design process that I have followed, drawing from Activity Theory as a lens, and producing design recommendations for technology that can support inverted teaching practices.