Glass: Group learning at significant scale via WiFi-enabled learner design teams in an ECE flipped classroom

Abstract

The Group Learning At Significant Scale (GLASS) approach is developed to increase the scalability and efficacy of student design teams during group sessions of a Flipped Classroom (FC), as well as conventional modality courses. GLASS utilizes freely-available collaboration tools to facilitate instructional delivery, assessment, and review of teams that leverage campus WiFi connectivity, along with a pedagogical approach using excerpts from actual data sheets and open Internet resources. This immersive collaborative design experience is interwoven on a weekly basis with the technical content provided via video during the preceding week. The instructor manages multiple design teams to conduct a weekly Challenge Problem during inclass time. First, students are randomized by the Learning Management System into small groups. Second, a challenge problem is provided, delivered via WiFi-enabled laptops, tablets, or smart phones, forming virtual design teams, regardless of where students are seated. Third, students utilize their WiFi enabled devices to discuss the challenge question via chatroom-style dialog channels alongside a solution whiteboard and/or figure drawing space, while utilizing open resources on the Internet to postulate a solution. Fourth, once the design team concurs that their results are complete, they submit their answers to the Learning Management System (LMS) for auto-grading and score-recording in the grade book. Credit is earned by correctly answering each designated question sub-part, which provides partial credit. Throughout the team design activity, the instructor monitors the assignment progress online in real-time, including windows for each design team showing a solution draft as it is constructed, and providing feedback via each group's designated chat channel. LMS statistics are available in real-time for the autograded answer of the first design team having a correct solution, dubbed the Pioneer Group, which receives a bonus after its group leader presents their solution to the class. GLASS was piloted within a FC-format ECE course titled Computer Organization, with an enrollment of 116 students, and also trialed within the courses Software Engineering and Healthcare Systems Engineering, having enrollments of 140 students each. Results indicate attainment of learning outcomes while making group sessions significantly more tractable for large enrollment courses and bringing useful insights to the instructor while learning is transpiring. Student perceptions indicated that 71%, 70.1%, and 60.3% of respondents agree or strongly agree that the GLASS tools/procedures were sufficiently easy to learn, that group sessions promoted useful interactions with classmates, and that the collaboration mechanisms enhanced abilities to solve engineering problems, respectively.