This is when I decided to look at the impact of taking notes while watching a flipped video has on students’ academic success. How I set up my research was by having my students take a pretest before the chapter as I always had them do. Then I taught my students how to take notes. Then I required that they take notes on every video that they watched for that chapter. They then took the chapter test. It was a very simple process that I followed, as the only change in how my students had been working all year was that they had not previously been required to take notes, now they were. I then took the data from that chapter pre-test and post-test and compared it with data from a similarly structured chapter from earlier in the year. What this means is that both chapters were five-day units not including assessments.
What I found by looking at this data was that in fact taking notes did affect students’ academic success. When students took notes, there was a mean growth (from pretest to posttest) of 52%. This was slightly higher than the mean growth when students did not take notes, which was 51%. This showed me that there was a benefit to taking notes. In addition, when comparing the average posttest scores between the two chapters I found that when taking notes the average score was higher. A mean score of 71% compared to a mean score of 62%.
While my research does suggest that there is an impact on students’ academic success when taking notes in a flipped classroom model, I do think that I need to continue to look into it. Because the data that I am comparing comes from two different chapters the topics being discussed could have had an impact on the scores of the tests. In addition, when the chapters were being taught could have affected the scores as well. The one without notes was taught in April, and the one with notes was taught at the end of May (about a week and a half before school was out). Even though I know I need to look more into the impact that taking notes has in a flipped classroom model, I do believe that there is a positive impact on students’ academic success and I plan on continuing to have my students take notes while they watch their flipped videos.
Nicole Lang is a fifth grade math teacher at Powell Elementary in North Baltimore, Ohio. She graduated with her Bachelor’s degree in Middle Childhood Education from Bluffton University in 2012. She completed her Master of Education in Classroom Technology from Bowling Green State University in 2018.