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1. Flipped Classrooms in Organic Chemistry—A Closer Look at Student Reasoning Through Discourse Analysis of a Group Activity

   https://doi.org/10.1039/9781839167782-00159  

   Mooring, Suazette R; Burrows, Nikita L; Gamage, Sujani (December 2022, The Royal Society of Chemistry)

   Students face various challenges in organic chemistry, including learning complex organic chemistry concepts, applying them to solve problems, and navigating curved arrow notation to depict organic chemistry mechanisms. Given these challenges, many chemistry education practitioners and researchers have focused their efforts on implementing and assessing pedagogical practices that can produce positive outcomes for all students. In this chapter, we describe flipped classroom pedagogy as an evidence-based practice in organic chemistry that has improved student outcomes and addressed learning challenges in the course. We also review key aspects of this practice. In addition, we focus on group activities since they are a common component of flipped classrooms. We will present a case study that analyzes students' reasoning through dialogue when they were engaged in a group quiz activity that was a component of a flipped organic chemistry course. Through the results of this case study, we will make suggestions for how group activities can be implemented to improve students' reasoning skills in organic chemistry. 

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2. An Effectiveness Study of Teacher-Led AI Literacy Curriculum in K-12 Classrooms.

   Zhang, H.; Lee, I.; Moore, K. S (February 2024, Proceedings of the EAAI-24: The 14th Symposium on Educational Advances in Artificial Intelligence.)

   Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly pervaded and reshaped almost all walks of life, but efforts to promote AI literacy in K-12 schools remain limited. There is a knowledge gap in how to prepare teachers to teach AI literacy in inclusive classrooms and how teacher-led classroom implementations can impact students. This paper reports a comparison study to investigate the effectiveness of an AI literacy curriculum when taught by classroom teachers. The experimental group included 89 middle school students who learned an AI literacy curriculum during regular school hours. The comparison group consisted of 69 students who did not learn the curriculum. Both groups completed the same pre and post-test. The results show that students in the experimental group developed a deeper understanding of AI concepts and more positive attitudes toward AI and its impact on future careers after the curriculum than those in the comparison group. This shows that the teacher-led classroom implementation successfully equipped students with a conceptual understanding of AI. Students achieved significant gains in recognizing how AI is relevant to their lives and felt empowered to thrive in the age of AI. Overall this study confirms the potential of preparing K-12 classroom teachers to offer AI education in classrooms in order to reach learners of diverse backgrounds and broaden participation in AI literacy education among young learners. 

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3. Addressing the Needs of Hispanic/Latino(a) Students with the Flipped Classroom Model

   Cruz, Alberto C.; Malek, A.; Medina, A.; Danforth, M. (June 2023, 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   This is a work-in-progress paper. The flipped classroom (FC) model is a well established teaching strategy dating to 1970’s practices in the Soviet Union. FC has two decades of use in post-secondary education since it was proposed by Lage et al. However, breaking studies find no academic improvement with FC model among minority students. Rather, it distances at-risk students. Indeed, certain demographics prefer authoritative over dialogic instruction style. We are motivated to determine FCs effectiveness with students at a medium-sized Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and Minority Serving Institution (MSI). For one of our NSF grant activities, we piloted two variations of the flipped classroom model. The key idea is that literature finds that FC classes need better regulation of underperforming students. Generally, the FC models in our work included peer-instruction, active learning, recorded lectures, and pre-assessment quizzes. There were no post-assessment assignments or traditional homework. Some sections employed Just-in-Time-Teaching, and careful selection of groups according to skill (within-class homogenous grouping). Other sections experimented with diversity and inclusion-based grouping and project-based learning. Students at the university are non-traditional, a term used to describe individuals who meet some of the following criteria: having a significant gap between post-secondary education and high-school graduation, being financially independent from their parents, having dependents, and working twenty or more hours per week. 60% of the individuals at our campus are Pell eligible. We study an intersectional inequality: wage-based work is disinclined to accommodate students attending lecture during the work day, and minorities may not prefer dialogic instruction. We analyze student attitudes since Fall 2020, among tens of class sections and hundreds of students. Class sections in the study are upper-division core courses in Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering. Data is collected from mostly online sections during the COVID-19 pandemic. A pre- and post-surveys were administered collecting demographic information and student attitudes. Hispanic/Latino(a) students found videos to be a complete study medium—that it was not required to seek out third-party materials to prepare for class. They found the class to be more engaging, and self-identified that they could identify previous concepts important to the task at hand. Results were surprising because there were no statistically significant differences with a general population’s exposure to FC. Hispanic/Latino(a)s find the FC model described in our work engaging and effective. 

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4. Innovative Learning Strategies to Engage Students Cognitively

   Aji, Chadia A.; Khan, Javed M. (July 2020, 2020 ASEE National Conference)

   The role of cognitive engagement in promoting deep learning is well established. This deep learning fosters attributes of success such as self-efficacy, motivation and persistence. However, the traditional chalk-and-talk teaching and learning environment is not conducive to engage students cognitively. The biggest impediment to implementing an environment for deep learning such as active-learning is the limited duration of a typical class period most of which is consumed by lecturing. In this paper, best practices and strategies for cognitive engagement of students in the classroom are discussed. Several lower level math and aerospace engineering courses were redesigned and offered during the academic year at a historically black university. The learning strategies in these redesigned courses included the “flipped” pedagogical model which allowed the integration of the active-learning strategy in the classroom. The research study is to determine the impact of these redesigned courses on student academic performance and persistence in STEM courses. The efficacy of the design of the flipped approach was also investigated. A between-group quasi-experimental research design was used for comparing student academic performance in traditional classroom (control group) and redesigned classroom (intervention group). A within-subject, repeated measures design was also used to assess the impact on the students’ self-regulated learning. A validated instrument was used to measure the effect of the redesigned learning environment on the motivational beliefs and self-regulated learning. Data on the academic performance of the students were collected. Analyses of these data indicated a significant impact on student academic performance. A positive change in student motivation and self-regulated learning was observed. Data analysis also validated the design of the intervention. This research is supported by NSF Grant# 1712156. 

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5. Implementation of Security Modules with Model-Eliciting Activities in Computer Science Courses

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34776  

   Yang, Jeong; Earwood, Brandon; Kim, Young Rae; Lodgher, Akhtar (June 2020, 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   Security is a critical aspect in the design, development, and testing of software systems. Due to the increasing need for security-related skills within software systems and engineering, there is a growing demand for these skills to be taught at the university level. A series of 41 security modules was developed to assess the impact of these modules on teaching critical cyber security topics to students. This paper presents the implementation and outcomes of the first set of six security modules in a Freshman level course. This set consists of five modules presented in lectures as well as a sixth module emphasizing encryption and decryption used as the semester project for the course. Each module is a collection of concepts related to cyber security. The individual cyber security concepts are presented with a general description of a security issue to avoid, sample code with the security issue written in the Java programming language, and a second version of the code with an effective solution. The set of these modules was implemented in Computer Science I during the Fall 2019 semester. Incorporating each of the concepts in these modules into lectures depends on both the topic covered and the approach to resolving the related security issue. Students were introduced to computing concepts related to both the security issue and the appropriate solution to fully grasp the overall concept. After presenting the materials to students, continual review with students is also essential. This reviewal process requires exploring use-cases for the programming mechanisms presented as solutions to the security issues discussed. In addition to the security modules presented in lectures, students were given a hands-on approach to understanding the concepts through Model-Eliciting Activities (MEAs). MEAs are open-ended, problem-solving activities in which groups of three to four students work to solve realistic complex problems in a classroom setting. The semester project related to encryption and decryption was implemented into the course as an MEA. To assess the effectiveness of incorporating security modules with the MEA project into the curriculum of Computer Science I, two sections of the course were used as a control group and a treatment group. The treatment group included the security modules in lectures and the MEA project while the control group did not. To measure the overall effectiveness of incorporating security modules with the MEA project, both the instructor’s effectiveness as well as the student’s attitudes and interest were measured. For instructors, the primary question to address was to what extent do instructors change their attitudes towards student learning and their teaching practices because of the implementation of cyber security modules through MEAs. For students, the primary question to address was how the inclusion of security modules with the MEA project improved their understanding of the course materials and their interests in computer science. After implementing security modules with the MEA project, students showed a better understanding of cyber security concepts and a greater interest in broader computer science concepts. The instructor’s beliefs about teaching, learning, and assessment shifted from teacher-centered to student-centered, during his experience with the security modules and MEA. 

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