Enhancing the flipped physics classroom through the use of preflight questions

Abstract

Students in my sophomore honors physics course at Evanston Township High school appeared to have difficulty connecting the content they learned from my flipped classroom video lectures to their assignments, including homework, labs, and tests. In order to address this, I created several 'preflights', which students completed after watching video lectures, but before coming to class. Two of my classes comprised the treatment group and two others comprised the comparison group. I wanted to determine the impact of preflights on student learning, including whether they help students understand video lecture material more effectively and whether they increase student confidence in their learning. I also wished to try out various formats of preflights to see which was most effective for student learning. I found that preflights had a positive effect on student learning overall, and modestly increased student confidence in their learning. Based on student interviews and other data, I determined that the most effective and preferred format of preflight was a guided tutorial, where I led students through a problem, and then asked them to perform a similar task. I concluded that in general, preflights were an effective way to increase student performance and confidence in their learning.