Evaluating the effectiveness of flipped classrooms for teaching CS1

An alternative to the traditional classroom structure that has seen increased use in higher education is the flipped classroom. Flipping the classroom switches when assignments (e.g. homework) and knowledge transfer (e.g. lecture) occur. Flipped classrooms are getting popular in secondary and post-secondary teaching institutions as evidenced by the marked increase in the study, use, and application of the flipped pedagogy as it applies to learning and retention. The majority of the courses that have undergone this change use applied learning strategies and include a significant “learning-by-doing” component. The research in this area is skewed towards such courses and in general there are many considerations that educators ought to account for if they were to move to this form of teaching. Introductory courses in computer programming can appear to have all the elements needed to move to a flipped environment; however, initial observations from our research identify possible pitfalls with the assumption. In this work in progress the authors discuss early results and observations of implementing a flipped classroom to teach an introductory programming course (CS1) to engineering, engineering technology, and software engineering undergraduates.