Modules for INteractive Teaching

The typical “flipped classroom” delivers lecture material in video format to students outside of class in order to make space for active learning in class. But why give students passive material at all? This project is developing a set of high-quality online educational materials (Modules for INteractive Teaching, or MINTs) that promote active, hands-on science learning to aid in teaching of core concepts for introductory biology at the college level. The priming activities in MINTs, Interactive Video Vignettes (IVVs), incorporate evidence-based teaching strategies to address known areas of confusion for entering students. Each IVV includes a live-action scenario with undergraduates investigating a biological problem with a realistic experiment that users participate in. Through the course of each 10-20 minute video, users are required to make predictions, answer questions, collect data and draw conclusions. Branching and reflection of previous answers allows each user to have a personalized experience. Research into how students learn with these tools is being used to develop entire modules that will incorporate the IVV as a priming activity to be done as homework, along with suggested activities to be done in class that take the introduced concepts deeper and/or broader.