The authors also polled the students to find out when they read. Almost half the students (43%) report reading the textbook for less than an hour a week ( Berry et al., 2010). They found that 18% of students report not reading the textbook at all, and approximately 92% of students report spending 3 h or less per week reading. (2010) studied pre-class reading habits of undergraduate students enrolled in finance courses across three different universities. Other studies have looked at how much time students spend reading textbooks, and when they read. (2004) studied the extent to which psychology students reported reading their textbooks and found that students only read, on average, 28% of the assigned reading before class and 70% before the exam. Even in traditional (non-flipped) college courses, pre-class reading has been shown to be important for student learning and yet 60–80% of students do not read the textbook before coming to class ( Cummings et al., 2002 Clump et al., 2004 Podolefsky and Finkelstein, 2006 Stelzer et al., 2009). The connection between pre-class reading and in-class participation is particularly relevant in flipped courses that rely on active in-class participation.Īs pre-class reading assignments replace lectures in flipped courses and serve as the primary mechanism for information transfer, it is essential that students complete their assignments before class. Students report that one of the most important factors in deciding whether to participate in class is reading the textbook beforehand ( Karp and Yoels, 1976). When students are exposed to the material before class they are better able to follow material in class ( Schwartz and Bransford, 1998), they ask more meaningful questions in class ( Marcell, 2008), and they perform better on exams ( Narloch et al., 2006 Dobson, 2008 Johnson and Kiviniemi, 2009). Moving the information delivery out of the classroom allows in-class time to be used for more interactive activities during which students can be actively engaged with instructors and other students. These pre-class assignments typically require students watch a video of a lecture online, or complete a reading. In a flipped class, the information transfer (traditionally accomplished by the instructor delivering a lecture during class) is moved outside the classroom to a pre-class assignment that students are expected to complete before coming to class. Moving these activities in class improves student learning as it provides them the opportunity to actively engage with the instructor and each other ( Herreid and Schiller, 2013). A key principle of the flipped classroom model is that students benefit from having access to the instructor (and other peers) when working on activities that, in traditional classrooms, are typically done at home (like problem sets). This is increasingly the case as more college classes are adopting “flipped” teaching strategies. Getting students to read the textbook before coming to class is an important problem in higher education. Finally, we compare the exam performance of two cohorts of students, where the only difference between them is the use of the platform we show that students do significantly better on exams when using the platform. We also demonstrate ways that the platform promotes active reading strategies and produces high-quality learning interactions between students outside class. We identify specific reading behaviors that are predictive of in-class exam performance. We find that, with this platform, students spend an above average amount of time reading (compared to that reported in the literature) and that most students complete their reading assignments before class. We show how the platform can be used to understand how students are reading before class. In this paper, we illustrate the successful implementation of pre-class reading assignments through a social learning platform that allows students to discuss the reading online with their classmates. 2Perusall LLC, Brookline, MA, United States.1Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States.
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