"Improve lecture videos (so that they are) strong enough to stand on their own w/o needing text"
"POGIL - some concepts, actually most, were too complicated for the scope of this course"
"Students are missing the experience of science as the exchange and evolution of ideas, and gender and ethnic issues are being ignored in the design of courses. Poor performers withdraw from learning, and even the best performers may disengage because they are not challenged. The results are low levels of learning and high levels of attrition... To address this situation and to help students become better learners in our courses, it is essential to recognize that education has two components, content and process, and that the process component often is not given adequate attention. Science education needs to be concerned equally with both the structure of knowledge, which is the content component, and with the development of the skills for acquiring, applying, and generating knowledge, which is the process component."
I believe to help our students become better at processing the knowledge they gain from lecture, we have to push our students hard, make them uncomfortable, and challenge them. Therefore, when I was reading these comments such as "they weren't beneficial because there weren't clear answers, and they were pretty extreme cases, some really hard to understand", actually pleases me as an instructor to no end. But I will agree with the students in that it is important to incorporate some sort of post-activity reflection/discussion, and I will be spending time during the Holiday break figuring out how to do this given the in-class time constraints (and, as always, am open to suggestions from my colleagues).
"I think the class should be more lecture based. While the flipped idea is fun, I think that for a class with this much information, we need a lecture"
At BSC, our mission statement specifically says "Birmingham-Southern College prepares men and women for lives of significance. The College fosters intellectual and personal development through excellence in teaching and scholarship and by challenging students to engage their community and the greater world, to examine diverse perspectives, and to live with integrity." If I were to simply "concentrate on the things we absolutely have to know" as some of my students have request, I would not be living up to the expectations of the college, and even to the students themselves. While flipping the class, such as a biochemistry course, may not seem to have instant gratification for the instructor, I do believe my students will (eventually) see the benefit of this course. In the meantime, let us continue to teach, assess, reflect, and modify!!