Ph.D. in Education, 2016
School of Education
June 1, 2013
Research Focuses on Flipped/Hybrid Instruction in STEM Higher Education
In the upcoming fall 2013, I will be a third-year doctoral student enrolled in the School of Education at UC Irvine. The past two years have been a valuable experience for me in ways that reshaped my research interests and career aspirations.
Admitted into the specialization of Language, Literacy, and Technology (LLT), I started my doctoral program planning to do research on the application of technology in teaching literacy skills. Halfway through the first year, I wrote an applied paper, Using Vocabulary Instruction Pedagogy to Enhance Engineering Education, in Dr. Penelope Collins’ class. Writing this paper marked the transition of my research interests from literacy to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education, as it called out the engineering student in me (I was a Materials Science & Engineering major in college) and made me realize how much I had enjoyed and missed the rigor of STEM subjects.
With regard to research, I am currently involved in four interrelated projects focusing on designing, implementing, and evaluating video usage in flipped/hybrid instruction in STEM higher education and its impact on student performance in subsequent courses. First, I am conducting research on measuring the effects of hybrid instruction in an electrical engineering course and the influence of the quality of online instruction on student motivation and learning behavior. Four waves of data on student motivation and learning behavior have been collected during the spring 2013 quarter. Second, I am working with two chemistry instructors to implement flipped instruction in their classrooms. We will measure the effects of flipped instruction, the use of One-Minute Papers to enhance video usage, and lasting effects of flipped instruction on subsequent chemistry courses. My third project is to help a biology professor to evaluate the impact of taking an online cellular biology course via Coursera on student performance in her face-to-face introductory biology class at UCI. Last, but not least, I am conducting a meta-analysis on the use of videos in flipped/hybrid classrooms; the results will be used to study implementation and sustainability issues of video usage on the college level.
Experiment and quasi-experiment design, survey design, psychometrical evaluation, panel data analysis, and meta-analysis are the five recurring themes in my research projects. I am willing to discuss my research interests with anyone who is interested in STEM higher education.