Time For Some Action!

"Failing to plan is planning to fail.”- Benjamin Franklin

As I continue to move forward in developing and implementing my innovation plan, identifying the effectiveness of various flipped classroom with project-based learning practices within my own classroom will be extremely important. This is where action research comes in.

Action research is a practice in which a teacher conducts research on his/her own students or campus in effort to improve or resolve a specific issue the classroom or campus is experiencing. By conducting their own action research, teachers are able to reflect on their teaching practices which can increase his/her utility and effectiveness (Mertler, 2020) in the classroom or on campus.

My motivation to implement a flipped classroom with project-based learning is to increase student engagement and academic achievement. Lack of student engagement and achievement of academic outcomes is an issue that many teachers on my campus, including myself, have expressed as an area of concern. Realizing this as an area of much-needed improvement, I decided to conduct action research focused on student engagement and learning.

The flipped classroom with project-based learning that I will be implementing consists of two components, computer-based home lectures activities and project-based in-class activities. While I feel pretty confident that the extremely hands-on, student-centered nature of project-based learning will have a positive impact on student engagement and learning outcomes, I am not as confident about the home, computer-based lecture activities. Therefore, I have decided to make the home-learning component the focus of my action research study. After reviewing literature of some of the best practices for engaging students in computer-based learning activities, I have decided to plan and conduct action research to answer the following question: What is the impact of lecture-capture videos, virtual collaboration, and learning artifacts on student engagement and learning in American elementary students? With this research, I hope to gain more information that can guide my teaching practices in a positive way as I implement the flipped-classroom model as well as provide the educational field with information that is currently limited on this topic for this particular population of students.

REFERENCES

Mertler, C. A. (2020). Action research: Improving schools and empowering educators (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.