Effectiveness of Flipped learning in Project Management Class

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1 , pp Effectiveness of Flipped learning in Project Management Class Jeong Ah Kim*, Hae Ja Heo** and HeeHyun Lee*** *Department of Computer Education Department, Catholic Kwandong University **Department of Mathematics Education, Catholic Kwandong University ***Department of Home Economics Education, Catholic Kwandong University Abstract For undergraduate students, project management topic is difficult to understand since they have no pre-knowledge or practical experiences before the class. To increase the outcome of project management class, we adopted flipped learning. Flipped learning is still emerging educational technology to professors and undergraduate students have no change to use flipped learning at high school age. In this paper, we describe our experiences and discuss the results of flipped class of project management course. Keywords: Flipped learning, Project Management Course, Self-Efficacy, Learning Outcome 1. Introduction The new technologies of 21C have changed so many social life as well as educational environment. Among these emerging technologies, smart device make possible big change in education. Smart learning requires for higher education to move into new educational paradigm in which student-centered learning not teachercentered teaching is more important. Since creative problem solving capability can be grown up by learning not teaching. Also collaboration and cooperative learning is required since 21C is network-based social life and working. According to the research [1], undergraduate students of Korean University are very passive so they have not enough interaction with teacher at class. Also they do very small amount of extracurricular activities. These are the reasons why capability of self-awareness and people skill cannot be improved. Flipped learning can be the solution for these problems. The most important reasons why professors have tried to adopt the flipped learning into his/her courses are to improve the capability such as critical thinking, creative problem solving, and expertise skill. Additionally, professor expected for students to participate in learning actively and to increase teamwork [2]. With these advantages, we tried to adopt flipped learning model to the project management class. We designed flipped learning course based on commercial video as pre-class material and used Trello software to keep the records of student s individual learning activities and team-based activities. In class, we designed teambased activities for discussions about contents. For evaluating the effectiveness of flipped learning, we used 5 measurement tools (1) attitude toward technology, (2) self-efficacy, (3) self-directed learning readiness, (4) course outcomes, (5) course evaluations from students. In section 2, we describe the concepts and basic process of flipped learning which the main educational technology of our class design is. In ISSN: IJSEIA Copyright c 2015 SERSC

2 section 3, we explain the course design and teaching method. In section 4, we discussed our lessons and learn and future experimental research plans. 2. Advantages of Flipped Learning Flipped learning called as Flipped classroom or Inverted classroom, means that the activities of students for learning are inverted [3]. In flipped learning, student try to understand the content at home and teach at class. It means students explain their understanding to teacher or other students to assess their pre-class efforts. These days, many classes of university have adopted this flipped learning model. Specially, we can find many practices in engineering college/department [4]. Many papers said that flipped learning is very successful for improving the outcomes of learning. Feedbacks or adjustments individually to each student at in-class lead to increase the understanding of course materials [ 5]. Integrating the pre-class and inclass make the students to have more responsibilities so that students participate the class more actively and the outcomes can be increased as well as self-efficacy [6]. Doing homework in class gives teachers better insight into student difficulties and learning styles [7]. 3. Research Design 3.1 Measurement Tools We used 4 measurement tools (1) attitude toward technology, (2) self-efficacy, (3) self-directed learning readiness, (4) course outcomes. New information technologies have been integrated with learning process so that students can access more learning materials. For increasing the benefits of IT, teachers should consider the attitude toward technologies [8]. In this paper, we applied measurement tool suggested by [9]. This tool consists of emotional, cognitive, behavioral attitude to IT. This was revised of original measurement tool by verifying the co-relationship and semantic consistency among the questions. Also, we should identify what relationship between the attitude toward technologies and advantages of flipped learning. Self-efficacy is the extent or strength of one's belief in one's own ability to complete tasks and reach goals [10]. This can be seen as the ability to persist and a person's ability to succeed with a task. The higher self-efficacy students have, the more outcome students can make. Self-directed learning readiness are becoming increasingly important as the need for flipped learning grows in strength. Educators are challenged to assist in the development of self-directed learning skills. We want to find how much flipped learning can increase the self-directed learning skill. In this paper, we revised the scale designed by [11]. It was designed to measure the complex of attitudes, skills, and characteristics that comprise an individual's current level of readiness to manage his or her own learning. For considering of selfefficacy and self-directed learning readiness, we measured twice. First time was done at the beginning of the fall semester and second tie was done after mid-term examination. Learning outcomes identify what the learner will know and be able to do by the end of a course or program. Learning outcome was assessed with the results of mid-term examination, the evaluation score of individual learning note and team discussion notes. 3.2 Participants and Course Design In this paper, we try to identify the relationship among the attitude toward technology, self-efficacy and course learning outcomes of flipped learning. We choose the 3rd grade students of educational college. The total numbers of 42 Copyright c 2015 SERSC

3 participation was 15. The subject of course was management. We have several reasons for adopting the flipped classroom for project management course. First of all, this subject is very difficult for undergraduate students. Also, this subject requires the teamwork and more interactive and more practical experiences are required. For flipped classroom, we designed 2 phases: (1) Pre-class, (2) In-class [4]. During pre-class phase, we provided commercial e-learning contents to give the professional and verified contents. In pre-class, log of learning activity and learning note are very critical since professors should identify how much the students understand the contents and how many hours the student put for learning. We provided the document template for keeping the records of learning activity and learning note shown as Figure 1. Instead of short quiz or examination for understanding the student s pre-class results, we designed log file for recording. During in-class phase, 50 minutes for team discussion based on individual learning notes and professor give the comments to the students individually bead on the log. After finishing the discussion, team makes a card for summarizing the discussion and questions on Trello. Professor answers to the questions and gives the comments immediately on the card of Trello. Also, professor gives short lecture to explain about the topics as facilitators for complete and correct understanding. Finally, professor gives the introductory information about next class. Figure 1. Document Template of Learning Activity Log: students should keep records of a, b, c, d, and educator write the evaluation results of student s activities at e. From this log, we can gather the information how much times student studied at pre-class and how much enough students understand the subject. 4. Discussions and Conclusions From the personal study log, we found the average spending time for pre-class is 3 and half hours. After adopting the flipped, students put much more times for preparation. It helps for students to understand the subjects and to increase the gaining of confidence and satisfaction. Students worked more on pre-class and in a more much more timely fashion than observed in the past. Also, more times and efforts student spend on pre-class, the evaluation score of learning note is higher and it improvement ratio is faster. Since students had no previous knowledge and experiences, they needed more times for understanding. Responsible for summarizing the learning note was critical success factor for students to study individually at home. With flipped learning, the efficacies of students have been increased. The more positive at attitude towards of technology, the more improvement of self-efficacy and the higher mid-term score students got. There are strong relationship between the self-efficacy and learning outcome. Students with strong self-efficacy showed more outcomes at midterm examination. We measure the improvement of self-efficacy between before and after of flipped learning. With flipped learning technology, the self-efficacy was increased slightly. More improvement students, much higher outcome. If the evaluation scores of learning note were steadily improvement then the self-efficacy was increased much more than other students. This paper describes the first experimental approach of flipped Copyright c 2015 SERSC 43

4 learning of project management course. Our flipped learning was a success in student improvement on understanding the topics and more active discussion. Also, useful technology such as learning note and leaning activity log are very important factors for increasing the self-efficacy of students and for motivating the student s activities. To verify the effectiveness of flipped learning, we compare the outcome between this year and last year since this project management course belongs to regular curriculums, same grade student took this course and the size of class is similar. The learning outcome is slightly increased. From our experiences, flipped learning requires the positive attitude and strong capabilities of technology, especially IT since the activities in pre-class are so related with IT. References [1]. H. S. Yu, National Survey of Student Engagement in Korean Universities (Ⅱ) Report RR , KEDI, (2012). [2]. P. Restad, Flipped Learning in Higher Education, (2013), [3]. J. Bergmann and A. Sams, Flip your students' learning, Educational leadership, vol. 70, no. 6, (2013), pp [4]. J. A. Kim, H. J. Heo and H. H. Lee, Flipped learning model of Management class, in proceedings of Advanced Science and Technology Letters, SERSC (Science & Engineering Research Support society), vol. 31, (2014). [5]. J. Bergmann and A. Sams, Flip Your Classroom: Reach every student in every class every day, Oregon: ISTE, (2012). [6]. K. Namik, C. Boae and C. Jeong-Im, A Case Study of Flipped Learning at College: Focused on Effects of Motivation and Self-efficacy, Educational Technology, vol. 30, no. 3, (2014), pp [7]. K. P. Fulton, 10 Reasons to flip, New Styles of Instruction, vol. 94, no. 2, (2012), pp [8]. M. A. Al-Khaldi and I. M. Al-Jabri, The Relationship of Attitudes to Computer Utilization: New Evidence from a Developing Nation, Computer in Human Behavior, vol. 14, no. 1, (1998), pp [9]. S.-H. Kim, Relations Among Learner's Personality Types, Self-Direction, Attitudes and Self-Efficacy toward Technology, and Achievement in Cyber University, Ph.D Thesis of Dept. of Educational Technology, The Graduate School of Ewha Womans University, (2007). [10]. J. E. Ormrod, Educational psychology, developing learners (5th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall, (2006). [11]. L. M. Guglielmino, Development of the self-directed learning readiness scale, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Georgia, (1977). * Corresponding author: Hae Ja Heo, Ph.D. Department of Mathematics Education, Catholic Kwandong University [email protected] Authors Jeong Ah Kim is a professor of Computer Education Department at Catholic Kwandong University, where she has been since She received a B.S. from ChungAng University in 1988, and an M.S. from the ChungAng University in She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from ChungAng University in From 1994 to 1996, she worked at EASY SW institute as director. Her research interests center on improving the performance of knowledge worker and students. In the software, she has worked on software development methodologies and software process improvement framework. In the education, she has worked on the improvement of self-efficacy with ICT and outcome-based education methodology. 44 Copyright c 2015 SERSC

5 Hae Ja Heo is a professor of Mathematics Education Department at Catholic Kwandong University, where she has been since She received a B.S. from Seoul National University in 1988, and an M.S. from the Seoul National University in She received her Ph.D. in mathematics education from Seoul National University in Her research interests are focused on student s mathematical understanding using computer software. Also, she has studied on education of prospective mathematics teachers and the education methodology. Hee Hyun Lee is a professor of Home Economics Dept. at Catholic Kwandong University, where she has been since She received a BA in Clothing and Textile in 1978 and an MA in 1980 from Sookmyung Women s University. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology of Clothing from Hanyang University in She has been teaching Home Economics Education for a long period of time. Her research interest involves new teaching method. Her recent research focuses on clothingrelated contents in middle school textbook Technology and Home Economics 2 Copyright c 2015 SERSC 45

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