Using e-assessment to support flipped-style teaching

Abstract

We show how weekly formative e-assessments are used to support flipped-style teaching of a module delivered to all first year Mathematics students at the University of the West of England, Bristol (UWE). The flip lecture approach places students at the centre of the learning process. For the module described here, a highly scaffolded approach was employed. A workbook containing gapped lecture notes was created as well as a handbook containing exercise sheets and extra reading material. Each week students were expected to independently: watch screencasts and fill in the relevant gaps in their workbooks; take a formative e-assessment; try some basic questions from the exercise sheet and optionally do some extra reading and/or work through a Maple file. During the following two hour class, TurningPoint questions and group activities were used to encourage active learning. Student feedback of this new teaching approach has been very positive.