The flipped plenary finance lecture intervention
3.5.1 A practical relevant problem with a research potential
Norwegian business schools must mass produce teaching in order to deal with the large number of students (Paper 3). Basic business economic courses
(NRØA-courses) at this author’s school (the smallest of the three ‘all-inclusive’ universities in Norway) often include approximately 200 students. In this regard, the plenary
lecture (as a teaching method) is an efficient tool for the mass production of edu-cation. However, the major emphasis of volume production can be a disadvantage for the quality of education since the primary teaching method used only promotes surface learning and not in-depth learning (Biggs, 1999).
Large lectures, perhaps implemented with numerous and densely packed PowerPoint slides to cover the entire curriculum, may be perceived as monotonous monologues by the students. Such a learning environment does not characterise quality learning, but it invites inactivity (Freeman et al., 2014; Østerud, 2004). As stated earlier, one of the most obvious findings of educational research is that feedback has a significant effect on learning (Black & Wiliam, 2009; Hounsell &
Entwistle, 2005; Raaheim, 2006).
However, in a large auditorium with many students, feedback is usually scarce.
Across the field of education, the notion that knowledge is uniquely constructed by the individual, rather than transmitted, has gained a strong foothold among research-ers as well as practitionresearch-ers. This viewpoint has been referred to as ‘constructivist’
(Piaget, 1977; Rorty, 1991). As the flipped plenary lecture intervention matured, it grew into a format which turned out to have a research potential.
3.5.2 A comprehensive understanding of the topic
Säljö (2001) described an education based on large lectures in his transmission meta-phor. According to this metaphor, knowledge is transferred by breaking up the infor-mation into appropriate pieces and distributing them to the students when lecturing.
In this case, students are passive, listening receivers and in a large auditorium with many students, feedback is usually absent. Implicit in the transmission metaphor is a simplified mechanistic view of learning (Østerud, 2009). Dewey’s (1938) call for active learning is based on a pragmatic view of knowledge, which implies that learn-ers construct knowledge by engaging in practical activities; that is, ‘practice makes
perfect’. Moreover, sociocultural theory emphasises that students should actively construct knowledge by drawing upon what they already know and believe (Dysthe, 2001). In terms of the affordances offered by ICT, the tool has the potential to enable active learning and engagement (John & La Velle, 2004).
In a recent comprehensive meta-analysis of undergraduate students, Freeman et al. (2014) reported that active learning leads to increases in examination perfor-mance which can raise average grades by a half letter grade. This study also showed that failure rates under traditional lecturing increased by 55% over the rates observed under active learning. Moreover, a teacher at a Norwegian business school ‘flipped the classroom’ in a large introductory economics course in order to create more satisfied freshmen, reduce the failure rate and achieve better mean grades (Heimly &
Bertheussen, 2016a). In broad terms, the classroom was ‘flipped’ by compressing the traditional oral lectures into articulated videos and distributing them to the students via the Internet so that they could ‘attend the lectures’ at their convenience. The teaching resources released were then applied to problem-solving in the auditorium.
The results indicated that the students were more satisfied with the ‘flipped’ course design than the traditional approach. Moreover, the failure rate decreased by 35.2%
(p < 0.05) while the average grades increased by approximately 1/3 letter grade (p <
0.05).
3.5.3 An innovative solution
When working on revitalising the lecture format to improve the learning environ-ment, the design decisions were informed by the desire to facilitate students’ practic-ing or more specifically, practispractic-ing by uspractic-ing a more industry-authenticated tool, i.e.
the spreadsheet. The plenary lecture format has not been regarded as suitable for collaborative practice. In order to overcome the lack of opportunities to learn through social interaction in plenary lectures, I attempted to balance this by designing work-shops and utilising pedagogical pairs as collaborative formats (see Section 3.6). When exploring the opportunities to change the lecturing format, the available options were severely constrained by the following resource boundaries at the business school as the teacher was allocated 38 teaching hours for the course, more than 100 students were expected to attend the lectures, there was only one PC suite available including roughly 20 PCs, and finally a large theatre was available for lecturing (for a maximum 500 students).
The flipped plenary finance lecture intervention 65
Based on the theoretical underpinnings of the course, the resource boundaries listed above, a literature review on how to activate students on plenary lectures and my own creativity, I constructed a solution in which the students brought their own PCs to the lecture theatre. In the new lecture design, I chose to activate technical infrastructure already possessed by the students, which was a laptop with spread-sheet software installed and a WIFI adapter. When lecturing, the lecturer (this
author) and the students solved worked examples together (Paper 8). I developed the
‘skeletons’ of the worked examples, which served as the starting points for their work, and distributed them to the students through the business school’s learning
management system.
In this case, a worked example involved a problem and the procedure for solv-ing it. Then, the students and I developed the examples simultaneously on individual PCs. While I demonstrated the examples on a spreadsheet presented on a large screen, the students modelled the examples on separate spreadsheets in their own laptops. In addition, I introduced new theoretical concepts and principles as the examples required. Once the example was complete, the students and I encoded the general principles behind the problem solution through various dialogues.
In the first cycle of this social constructivist-inspired and technology-enhanced lecture format, I presented more comprehensive business-related examples. How-ever, since many students felt that these examples were too complicated, I redesigned the lecture content by developing worked examples. For each lecture, I took printouts of the worked examples and distributed them to the students who did not want to use a PC when attending the lectures. In spring 2015, I developed interactive micro-lectures to support the worked example lecture format, and by this approach, the classroom was ‘flipped’ (Heimly & Bertheussen, 2016a; Lage et al., 2000).
One purpose for the interactive micro-lectures was to scaffold the students who thought that the progress in the class was too fast. As a result, these students could watch the calculation procedures on a PC, laptop, tablet or mobile device
(either before the live lecture or after) and even review the material according to their needs. Another purpose for the micro-lectures was to support the students who could not attend the live lectures for one reason or another. Through this constructed solution, I did not interfere with any of the course’s resource constraints. I continued to use the large auditorium for teaching, which enabled me to teach more than 100
students at a time. Moreover, I was not restricted by the small PC laboratories and I was able to perform all of the teaching within the 38 hours allocated for the course.
3.5.4 A solution implemented and tested to work in practice
The cost-benefit ratio for the institution when implementing the aforementioned lecture format is positive since more satisfied students are produced at no extra cost, i.e. the students bring (and finance) the added infrastructure necessary. The lecture notes on the worked examples are distributed for free (freeware) for this specific course. Thus, a finance lecturer wanting to create more activity in his/her finance lectures (based on the constructivist pedagogical principles outlined here) can implement the innovation right ‘out-of-the-box’.
3.5.5 The scope of the solutions applicability
The concept of worked examples is not restricted to an undergraduate finance course, but it can have a wider area of application, i.e. other business topics such as budget-ing, cost accountbudget-ing, tax accountbudget-ing, etc. However, it will require an extra effort by the teacher to design and develop subject specific worked examples. In Heimly &
Bertheussen (2016a), another variant of the flipped plenary lectures format is
discussed and evaluated. In Table 3.4, resources resulting from the present study are listed in order to support a teacher in flipping his/her plenary lectures.
Table 3.4. Papers and artefacts that can inspire a practitioners to flip plenary lectures in business-related topics
o Paper 8 Bertheussen, B. A. (2013a). Revitalizing Plenary Finance Lectures. Beta, 27 (1), 78–92.
o Artefact 5 Interactive micro-lectures in basic finance. Open source documents available from the author: [email protected]
o Artefact 6 Bertheussen, B. A. (2012b). Slik kan regnearkmodellering revitalisere læring av klassisk bedriftsøkonomi. Dybde 1/2012, Publication at School of Business and Economics, UiT–The Arctic University of Norway.
The learning community interventions 67