Flipped Classroom Pilot - In Action at UWW

Dr. David Gee of The University of Wisconsin - Whitewater teaches entrepreneurship and strategic management at UWW. 

The students in his class are business college seniors in their capstone course – required for all business majors.

“We have traditionally used a textbook, case studies and lecture (I use a Socratic approach).” Said Gee, “However, this semester I was looking at ways to engage students at a deeper level.”

Gee decided to plunge into a pilot of a “flipped classroom model.”  If you are not familiar with this model, it is a pedagogical design in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed. Short video lectures are viewed by students before the class, while in-class time is devoted to exercises, projects, or discussions.

Gee pre-recorded videos of himself teaching thirteen modules and then uploaded them to UWW’s LMS (learning management system). Students then watch the videos before class and when they arrive in the classroom they are broken-into teams. Within these teams they apply the core concepts to innovative companies (selected from Forbes list of most innovative Global companies) and then share their insights with the rest of the class.

Photographed above is UWW Entrepreneurship and Marketing Double Major, Samuel Lepak “studying” whilst exercising.  Lepak is the former CEO Chapter President of UWW.