The learning pathway: Online navigational support for students within the structured flipped classroom

Context: First Year higher education marks a stepping stone in student development; many students struggle with the transition to an environment that expects them to take responsibility for their own learning, moving from externally-regulated learning (teacher centric) to self-regulated learning (Vermunt 1988). While this challenge is nothing new, it is a significant adjustment that students are required to make even within traditional didactic teaching-focused curriculums (Entwistle and Peterson 2004). What is exacerbating this challenge for students is the increasing institutional shift towards a more learningcentric curriculum as epitomised by the Flipped Classroom (FC). In the FC, students are provided with online pre-learning activities, such as podcasts, readings, and quizzes that must be completed before attending class. Students have to take responsibility for their learning at the macro- (degree program) and micro- (course) levels. To further increase this level of disorientation for First Year Engineering students, the FC method was applied to a large (1200+ student) team-based multidisciplinary design course that integrated both fundamental engineering materials and structured problem solving knowledge (theory) with open ended hands-on design and build projects (practice).Purpose: The “Learning Pathway” (LP), a structured online navigational interface (Stevens et al. 2008), was designed and implemented to provide students with a clear cognitive visual pathway through the FC. It was designed as a graphical course outline, structured into two primary navigational markers representing “What you need to Know” and “What you need to Do” that aimed to bridge the gap between the online and face-to face environment. The information was displayed in manageable (weekly) chunks in the context of both course learning and assessment activities as well as the design phase of their project (McAlpine et al. 2006). This intervention significantly increased the utilisation of the Blackboard Learning Management System (LMS): the LMS hits per enrolment were more than double that of any other course within the institution. This engagement with the LMS has been taken as an early indicator of success: students who are accessing the LMS are engaging with online material. Institutional formal course evaluations also markedly improved in the areas targeted: student perception of course structure (+33%) and clarity of assessment requirements (+18%).Design/Method: The research into the efficacy of the LP as a Learning Analytics Integration Platform and navigational aid for students, pools expertise from six US and Australian universities. The data includes that from surveys, focus group interviews, formal institutional evaluations and a study of the BlackboardAnalytics™ suite of applications. It is being used to understand the ways in which students interact with online resources, self-regulate their learning, and to improve the LP.Results: The LP is being developed to provide students with an individually-tailored digital map for planning and tracking their learning trajectories. These maps will make student engagement and learning progress visible to both academics and students. As it currently stands the LP indicates to students what they need to know and what they need to do, the next implementation will include ‘How am I going’. This will allow students to track own progress within a course or program, benchmark their progress against peers, and monitor their progress relative to instructor expectations.Conclusions: A carefully designed online environment that integrates learning analytics data from multiple sources in a simple, graphical meta-level representation of learning (What you need to know; What you need to do and How am I going?) supports the development of student self-regulation of learning within complex “authentic” FC courses.