Inverting the Lecture Paradigm for a Multidisciplinary Course

The traditional lecture course is based on a simple premise; that students will be actively involved in their learning.These active learners read textbooks and seek out supplemental sources of knowledge.They try to understand concepts rather than just memorize terminology.They attempt problems beyond those assigned for homework.Certainly these active learners still exist, particularly in upper level college courses, but in first and second year courses, the passive learner is the more common species.These passive students expect that all relevant information is given to them in lecture and believe that if they can solve problems exactly like those assigned for homework, they are knowledgeable.In addition, the diversions available today present a unique challenge to those of us teaching the millennial generation.While instructors have always been challenged to hold the attention of their students during lecture courses, they now must compete with text messaging and wireless internet access.Instructors may wonder if anyone at all is listening to the lecture.A move away from traditional lectures has been afoot at colleges and universities across the country, from courses taught entirely from a guided inquiry perspective, to classes that disperse problem solving time within lecture periods and those that have moved lecture outside of the classroom entirely.Here we report on our experience with the latter in an interdisciplinary, sophomore level course; Materials in Engineering Systems.Lectures were prerecorded using the Tegrity system and made available to students via Blackboard for viewing prior to class.Class meetings then focused solely on problem solving.This inverted instructional approach, as assessed by student performance on the final examination and course evaluations, shows that students improved their abilities to perform calculations, but not their understanding of conceptual material.