Harvey Mudd among colleges experimenting with 'flipped' classes

The L.A. Times reports:

Instructors at Harvey Mudd College, a school known for its science and engineering experiments, are studying a new group of subjects: their students.

Over the last couple years, three professors have split some of their classes in half. One group takes part of the course online while the other has only classroom instruction. As part of a federally funded study, the professors have compared the groups to see which performed better.

So far, there hasn’t been much difference. “It wasn’t necessarily the outcome we were imagining,” said Jeff Groves, the school’s dean of faculty.

If the study’s preliminary findings hold up for another two years, the results could have bigger ramifications at Harvey Mudd, which has offered only a handful of courses with online elements. As the authors noted in an academic paper: “Students (like us faculty) hate change.”

Change.