In previous years, the "Statistics I" course was taught in the traditional way. Students had access to the course material and assignments via Moodle and were introduced to the course content when the instructor presented it in class. There was no evaluation or self-assessment during the semester. The final exam grade was the only feedback for the teacher regarding the students' level.
With the implementation of the flipped classroom, students receive on Moodle, one week in advance, the elements of the subject that they must prepare independently before the course. Moodle can host the course content, send group announcements to students enrolled in the course, and offer quizzes (automatically corrected) and surveys.
The items provided each week are as follows:
- the list of key points around which the week's course is structured;
- theoretical explanations and some examples;
- several explanatory videos that cover and develop certain key points (3 to 4 video vignettes per week, each lasting 5 to 10 minutes and created with Camtasia);
- a self-assessment quiz with an automatic answer key (on Moodle);
- practical work.
The day before the course, the teacher consults the results of the self-assessment quiz. According to these results, he adapts the course and prepares questions on Wooclap that will be submitted to the students during the course. This data collection makes it possible to personalize each course according to the students' progress and to make it more interactive. The course is based on questions displayed on the screen that students can answer by voting on the internet (via the Wooclap platform) with their smartphone. If the rate of correct answers to a question is less than 80%, the teacher provides explanations (without revealing the correct answer) and then asks the students to form groups to discuss the question. Students then answer the same question again. Each Wooclap quiz consists of 7 to 10 questions. Students have about 2 minutes to answer each question. During the same week, a "classic" session of correction of the practical work is conducted in turn by one of the assistants.
Students can ask questions about the material during the course and after the course on SpeakUp. They also have the possibility to vote for the questions of their fellow students (thumbs up or down). In addition to a chronological view, the questions can be easily sorted according to their relevance. The teaching team can also moderate the questions. The grouping of all the questions on the same platform has allowed the teaching team to create a FAQ of the most frequent questions that students can refer to regularly. The teachers commit to answering each question within two working days.
Four times during the semester, the teaching team offers "bonus exams" on Moodle. A bonus exam consists of 7 questions and covers the concepts taught during the previous 2-3 weeks. The bonus exams allow both the students and the teacher to evaluate their level. To encourage participation in these 4 exams, they are linked to a bonus system that is taken into account in the final grade. Students can work in groups to answer the quiz, which is available throughout the day. However, each student in the course receives a different variation of the 7 questions. The nature of each question is the same, but with different numerical values that are randomly generated by the R/exams module (R is a free software environment for statistical processing and visualization).
Finally, 4 times during the semester, students are asked to participate in surveys. The results of these surveys are used to illustrate certain concepts taught in the course. The themes of these surveys, serious or unusual, are chosen in order to give concrete and realistic examples of the methods learned in the course.
To ensure the sustainability of the tools used in the course, the teaching team has created a toolbox with videos and templates for the use of all the tools used. For example, the team prepared a video on "How to create a Wooclap quiz and import it into Moodle". The goal is to keep the course in its new form, even if the teaching staff changes.
