An Experiment in “Flipped” Teaching in Freshman Calculus

Abstract

At Binghamton, Calculus 1 is taught to over 1000 students each fall in sections of about 30–40 students, with graduate student instructors teaching most sections. Despite having small classrooms instead of lecture halls, the satisfaction and performance of students has historically been poor. We had hoped to improve student success by changing how we teach and not by lowering our standards. In the fall of 2013, the Binghamton University Department of Mathematical Sciences undertook an experiment in flipped teaching with calculus 1 in which we compared a flipped model to our traditional lecture model. Overall, our quantitative analysis found moderate benefits to flipping over traditional methods for all groups studied. Informally, while student opinion varied, instructors largely were quite positive, finding that their students were more engaged and that instructors were able to give students more individualized attention.

Keywords:

• Flipped classroom
• calculus
• undergraduate education
• large university
• graduate student instructors

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura Anderson

Laura Anderson is an Associate Professor at Binghampton University SUNY. She was previously an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University and a Max Zorn Assistant Professor at Indiana University.

Joseph Phillip Brennan

Joseph Phillip Brennan obtained his PhD from the University of Florida in 2012 and was a Riley Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Binghampton University SUNY until 2015. He is a Brown Dot (a 2013 Project NExT Fellow) and is currently an Assistant Teaching Specialist at the University of Kansas.