Top 10 Must-Read Research Papers in June

 – Jon Bergmann –

As I was reviewing the 73 articles this month, I noticed how many of the top studies related to the Flipped Learning Global Standards. The articles and research papers clearly aim at embracing deeper learning and asking great questions about how to improve Flipped Learning. In fact, I recently got an inquiry from a researcher who wanted to use the Global Standards as a template for research. I enthusiastically agreed as this is the direction that flipped research needs to move. Below you will see how each of the top 10 research articles connect to the Global Elements of Effective Flipped Learning. I encourage each of you dive deeper with just one of these studies. Read it and ask, “How can I incorporate this research into my daily lessons?” For those of you on summer break, plan and consider how you can use it to change your class for the next school year.  

Wondering what to do with these research papers?  Are you saying to yourself  “so what do I do with this?”  Well, so is Terra Graves, a k12 educator who writes a monthly column called, (you guessed it ) “So what?”   Each month Terra takes one of these papers and offers practical, actionable tips on how to actually use the big finding in your classroom.   She’s really good at it. Read her column here.

	Richard Jochelson & David Ireland (Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba) investigated Flipped Learning for legal education in Canada. They do an excellent job reviewing how Flipped Learning is uniquely suited to the study of Law. They then did a study on student perceptions in their context. They have some excellent commentary on why Flipped Learning is especially pertinent to teaching millennials. For example, they state: “students in the millennial generation do not process information the same way as past generations; students are too often disengaged; the rampant spread of digital media has rendered lectures and Socratic teaching obsolete and easy to ignore; students live through technology and should expect to learn on that same technology.” This 26-page paper is worth the read.
	Charity C.Glass and others at the Harvard Medical School demonstrated that combining Flipped Learning with role play and simulation showed dramatic results with pre-med students learning about cricothyroidotomy. This study obviously shows how important it is to use various active strategies when flipping a class.
	Abdul Shakour Preece and Popoola Kareem Hamed (International Islamic University Malaysia) had students create the pre-class media, with the supervision of different professors in a curriculum and instruction course. They found many challenges, but overall, they found the “Learner-Led” model had a “statistically significant impact.”
	Hakan Erdogmus and others demonstrated that adding embedded questions into the pre-class work improved student performance in a flipped class. This further emphasizes the importance of numerous frequent formative assessments.
	Mohammed F.M. Abushammala (Department of Civil Engineering, Middle East College, Sultanate of Oman) confirmed how important it is for students to have multiple assessments in a flipped class. They concluded: “It is also observed that the use of multiple assessments engaged students deeply with the course and provided deeper learning.”
	Min Shi, (Department of Management, College of Business and Economics, California State University, Los Angeles) did a survey of how to improve “mega-class” student improvement. He found that Flipped Learning contributed to making large classes more effective.
	Zamzami Zainuddin (The University of Hong Kong) and others studied the impact of Flipped Learning on student ownership. They reviewed the data from their LMS and found those students who spent more time in the LMS showed significant improvement, and those same students took more ownership in their learning.
	Bojana Beric-Stojsic and others studied the effects of learning style preferences and success in a flipped class. Interestingly, they found “the results indicate no significant correlation between the students’ learning style preferences and participation in class discussion.” They concluded that Flipped Learning works for virtually every student.
	Wilfred Greyling (Waikato Institute of Technology, New Zealand) explored how the professor’s role changes over time when Flipped Learning is coupled with Project Based Learning. He observed students taking more ownership in this mixed class and found “in project-based flipped classrooms, the tutor has a significant role, designing tasks, re-defining both his own and learners’ roles, as well as retaining an inquiry-based approach when barriers occur in the learning.”
	Kristina Liu (Harvard Medical School) used Flipped Learning coupled with simulation for a dermatologic surgery class and saw median scores go from 27 out of 47 to, get this, 46 out of 47! Crazy good results.