flipped classrooms

FLIPPED CLASSROOMS: AN AGENDA FOR INNOVATIVE MARKETING EDUCATION IN THE DIGITAL ERA Teegan Green

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Flipped classrooms reverse traditional lecturing because students learn content before class through readings and prerecorded videos, freeing lectures for hands-on activities and discussion. However, there is a dearth of literature in marketing education addressing flipped classrooms. This article fills this void using grounded theory to develop a student-centered framework for implementing flipped classrooms into marketing education. Exploratory videographic analysis of publicly available videos (N = 6) describes experiences of nonmarketing educators who have implemented flipped classrooms. This supports a framework for transitioning flipped classrooms into marketing education. Flipped teaching, learning, and assessment ideas for marketing educators are provided.

A YouTube search for “flipped classrooms” will bring you to a TED presentation by Salman Kahn, the MIT and Harvard graduate who is the creator of the Kahn Academy. Today, Kahn Academy, a nonprofit education organization, has grown from an initial set of instructional videos in mathematics, to over 2,200 videos accessed by one million students per month, with up to 200,000 videos watched by online students each day (www.khanacademy.org/about/the-team). In higher education, the flipped classroom revolution is becoming increasingly popular, with more and more universities offering online resources that facilitate the integration of flipped classroom modules. Online learning is already vastly popular with students in higher education (Snowball, 2014) and the flipped classroom pedagogy fits well into the demand for online learning. Flipping course content is tailored to implementing lecture content entirely online, freeing up face-to-face contact for active student interaction. However, despite the growing prevalence of flipped classrooms in an array of higher education disciplines, discussions around implementing the teaching innovation in marketing have remained sparse. The marketing education literature remains relatively silent on presenting either empirical or theoretical work that unpacks the practicalities around flipped classrooms from a marketing educator’s perspective. This article fills this void by calling to the attention of marketing

Teegan Green (B.A./B.Ed.[Sec], B.A./BBusMan [Hons 1], University of Queensland), Ph.D. Candidate, UQ Business School, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, [email protected].

educators the rising prominence of flipped classrooms in higher education. The research question addresses the need to develop marketing-specific models for implementing a social constructivist theoretical framework for flipped classrooms. To support this objective, this article presents a theoretical framework informed by social constructivism theory, for implementing flipped classrooms into the discipline of marketing. Marketing-specific guidelines are developed, based on videographic analysis of a small exploratory sample of publicly available video interviews (N = 6) with nonmarketing higher education practitioners. There was no publicly documented videographic material from the perspectives of marketing practitioners at the time of data collection. As such, the approach in this research is to synthesize a framework based on videographic interview material from nonmarketing educators’ lived experiences of flipped classroom implementation. The framework serves as a collective series of “lessons learned” from other tertiary-based disciplines as a way to inform best practice (Chickering & Gamson, 1999) for implementing flipped classrooms in marketing education. Finally, recommendations specific to marketing educators looking to implement flipped classroom pedagogy are made.

LITERATURE REVIEW In higher education, flipped classrooms are emerging as one of the latest pedagogical innovations (Steed, 2012). A flipped classroom reengineers the entire education process, literally “flipping” the service delivery Marketing Education Review, vol. 25, no. 3 (fall 2015), pp. 179–191. Copyright Ó 2015 Society for Marketing Advances ISSN: 1052–8008 (print) / ISSN 2153–9987 (online) DOI: 10.1080/10528008.2015.1044851

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180 Marketing Education Review from entirely face-to-face contact to partly virtual or “blended” contact (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004). Students who partake in a flipped classroom education experience are expected to familiarize themselves with new and unfamiliar class content in their own time, so that in-class lecture time can be used to complete hands-on task-based activities with their peers and educators (Crews & Butterfield, 2014). The difference and interest in flipped classrooms lies in the use of prerecorded video content as opposed to real-time face-to-face instruction, presenting a form of “service separation” (Keh & Pang, 2010). Flipping a tertiary classroom means that class time is primarily for interaction, rather than instruction. In a flipped classroom environment, traditional face-to-face lectures are replaced with prerecorded lectures, videos, audio excerpts, readings, and other supplementary learning materials that students are expected to familiarize themselves with prior to coming to their lecture (Hughes, 2012). This is not to suggest that lectures are the only instructional mode used in marketing; however, lectures are traditionally the substantive mode of instruction in higher education. The learning difference in flipped classrooms is that when students arrive at their lecture, it is not a traditional instruction mode that they will receive but rather interactions with their class peers and lecturers and tutors that take place embedded in a social learning environment. For this reason, flipped classrooms have been described as being more socially inclusive (Lage, Platt, & Treglia, 2000). Rather than using lectures for instructor-centered discussion, in a flipped classroom, the actual face-to-face contact between lecturers and students is optimized for task-based activities and hands-on discussion among students, group work, team learning, and other educational experiences.

Benefits of Flipped Classrooms Flipped classrooms present an innovative model to engage students in a different way than can be traditionally done with class content, and it is well known that the need to engage students in higher education is paramount (Coates, 2005; Russell-Bennett, RundleThiele, & Kuhn, 2010). Engaged students are known to be more likely to stay on at university and continue with further studies (Russell-Bennett et al., 2010). As a result, several higher education disciplines have

discussed flipped classroom implementation, including (but not limited to) courses spanning physics (Brunsell & Horejsi, 2013) and science (Herreid & Schiller, 2013). Research indicates that the implementation of interactive student-centered activities and learning experiences enriches the learning process much more than can be achieved in traditional education modes (Zappe, Leicht, Messner, Litzinger, & Lee, 2009). When the learning environment is enriched with different types of educational experiences for students to encounter, research indicates that students are likely to become more engaged with the course content. For example, in marketing, student-centered learning in the context of students developing their own market spaces has proven useful (Russell-Bennett et al., 2010). Student engagement is a long-term priority for many higher education providers (Russell-Bennett et al., 2010; Tinto, 1997, 2006/2007). When students are engaged with their course content, they are likely to learn more, achieve more, and subsequently do more with their tertiary education studies. A substantive factor in tertiary education affecting student engagement is class size. Scholars generally agree that the smaller the class size, the higher students satisfaction ratings of their course experience (e.g., Feldman, 1984; McKeachie, 1980; Wachtel, 1998). However, online forms of instruction such as blended learning (of which flipped classrooms are a subset) have been shown to ameliorate the negative effect of larger class sizes on student satisfaction. Blended learning requires “the thoughtful integration of classroom face-to-face learning experiences with online learning experiences” (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004, p. 96), which flipped classrooms do indeed represent given the careful prerecording of lecture content coupled with planned in-class activities designed to optimize student learning. As such, ancillary benefits of flipped classrooms are that they may enable better class size management for lecturers, particularly for those instructing large tertiary undergraduate students in excess of several hundred students. To summarize, in traditional lecture settings where flipped classrooms are not used, individual lecturer–student interaction is difficult (particularly for large courses). However, by pairing students in activity groups, and transitioning lecture time from lecturing to discussion, more engaging social learning opportunities can be realized.

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Downsides of Flipped Classrooms Despite the clear benefits of implementing flipped classrooms, there are also several downsides that must be acknowledged, the process of which highlights that flipped classrooms may be more conducive to some types of students and staff. First, given that there are two phases to the flipped classroom (phase 1: prelearning; phase 2: in-lecture engagement), there is a heavy onus on the role of the student to engage with the prelearning content during phase 1. Often, this is the “static” element of self-education that students must embark on to gain value from the devotion of in-lecture time to discussion-based activities, which presumes a basic knowledge of required readings and prerecorded lecture content. As such, it is reasonable to imagine that the flipped classroom experience may be more challenging to implement among students with low motivation levels or an external locus of control (or students who are not high achievers). This could be similar for students who are new to the university experience (i.e., first years) and who require higher levels of social interaction and scaffolding support through the entire learning process (Snowball, 2014). The presentation of prerecorded lecture content to students without the aid of a lecturer or tutor at the initial point of content exposure may be an overwhelming experience for some students. In addition, some students may struggle with the nonsocial aspect of learning in isolation online during phase 1, prior to engaging with phase 2. Unfortunately, this may mean that students drop out before even progressing to phase 2 of the flipped classroom experience. Several solutions address the issue of nonengagement in phase 1, during which students are required to learn content online before engaging with phase 2 in-lecture discussion with peers. Lessons can be drawn from other blended forms of learning, which aim to increase social engagement in the online environment for students prior to lecture attendance. For example, a recent study of social presence in virtual worlds found that students are most satisfied when social presence is high (Bulu, 2012). Social presence is important in blended learning environments in which collaborative learning, or the ability to work with other students in the class, has been shown to maximize student satisfaction (So & Brush, 2008). Additional research shows that the level of interactivity among students facilitates social presence in distance-based higher education (Kim, Kwon, & Cho, 2011).

Another issue is that if students do not complete phase 1 of the flipped classroom experience (i.e., selfdriven independent learning of prerecorded lecture content), then phase two will likely suffer as a result. For example, in phase 2 of a flipped classroom, the majority of in-lecture time is devoted to discussion with peers and lecturers, hands-on activities, debates, teamwork or other group-based problem-solving tasks, and the chance for students to ask clarifying questions based on prelearning. The difficulty with devoting lecture time to group-based social learning activities is that students who have not completed the prelearning will not be able to actively contribute to the in-class activities. This will not only cause unprepared students’ own learning and educational progress to suffer but also that of their group mates and fellow student peers who rely on the whole group having done sufficient preparatory work to engage in meaningful discussion during class. There are a few possible solutions for educators who are faced with this issue in trying to implement flipped classrooms. First, students could self-select into discussion groups based on completion or noncompletion of prelearning activities, such that students who do actively prepare for the flipped learning experience prior to the lecture will not be let down by the experience. Similarly, students who do not prepare before class can then come together and would be required to spend some time engaging with content in-lecture in order to then progress to student-centered learning and discussion. The implication of such an approach, which places the responsibility for student learning with students themselves, is that if higher education is to move toward a student-centered model of education in the digital era, then the onus for student learning must remain with students. A pragmatic part of this for the innovative educator seeking to implement a flipped classroom yet faced with the reality of varying levels of student engagement and education is to allow students to self-moderate their work, preparation, and learning. As such, it is essential to frame a balanced critique of the benefits and downsides of flipped classrooms around a discussion of appropriate theoretical development in support of the endeavor. This understanding of best practice implementation for marketing education can be usefully informed by other disciplines successfully using flipped classrooms. This is achievable by adopting a theoretical approach to flipping the

182 Marketing Education Review classroom in ways that are specific to marketing education and praxis. One theory from extant education literature that explains the processes and underlying mechanisms of implementing flipped classrooms is that of social constructivism. What follows is a discussion of one way to reinvigorate large-scale marketing education and praxis with innovative teaching, through the series of hands-on interactive learning experiences that are facilitated by flipped classrooms, grounded in social constructivism.

THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT

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Social Constructivism Social constructivism derives from cognitive and behavioral psychology (Wertsch, 1984). Theories of social constructivism were made popular in educational contexts by Lev Vygotsky (1962, 1978). Social constructivism is a student-centered learning theory that emphasizes the social context/s and social environments within which individuals learn. In social constructivism, the emphasis is on the student as an active agent and on the teacher or lecturer as playing a deemphasized, facilitative, rather than instructive role. In this manner, students are expected to engage in a series of hands-on task-based activities that emphasize active rather than passive learning among social interactions with student peers. A central tenet of Vygotskian conceptions of social constructivism in learning is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD reflects the difference between the actual developmental level of a learner as determined through problem-solving tasks and the level of a learner’s potential academic achievement as determined through problem solving under instructed guidance and/or collaboration with peers (Wertsch, 1984). An important aspect to note regarding the ZPD is that it is individually learner centered; as such, the ZPD varies from student to student. The key to understanding the ZPD is through implementing sufficient scaffolding in the classroom. Scaffolding is an education-specific aspect of best practices in pedagogy that ensures that learners are sufficiently supported in the learning process to bridge the gaps in their knowledge between what is known and what is unfamiliar in terms of course content. Introducing scaffolding into the classroom includes the assistance of the lecturer and one’s peers, as well as supporting resources for

students so that they are able to bridge the learning distance that the ZPD reflects (Snowball, 2014). The assistance of the lecturer and peers in a social collaborative learning environment engenders a notion of “communities of practice.” Wenger (2000) extended an understanding of social learning systems by arguing that communities of social understanding and learning are defined by the history and social environment of the group in question. According to Wenger’s conception, a central facet of belonging in a social learning system is grounded in creating engagement, which includes doing things with others, talking, and producing outcomes. This need for engagement in a social learning system links back to earlier discussions around creating opportunities for student engagement through innovative pedagogies that optimize student learning outcomes. Parker, Maor, and Herrington (2013) also note the need to align learner needs with innovative pedagogies (such as flipped classrooms) and technology, arguing that the intersection of these three creates the ideal environment for educators to strive for. Research indicates that a social constructivist approach to learning facilitates more interactive, active, engaging, and student-centered learning than could otherwise be achieved in more orthodox didactic teacher-centered environments (Parker et al., 2013). Prior to the advent of online education and the infusion of technology into the classroom, the traditional lecture was only ever able to be conceived as a phenomenon that would inevitably occur face to face. Particularly in the higher education sector, the notion of providing en masse education in any mode other than passive lecture seating was inconceivable. However, the digital era and the inundation of technological tools has reengineered contemporary higher education service offerings and dismisses notions that education would only ever be able to be a face-to-face learning experience. With the introduction of technologies to facilitate video-recorded lecture content that can be made available ahead of time in the flipped classroom approach, students are able to pursue self-directed learning at their own pace. Self-directed learning paired with inclass group work has the potential to reflect a more successful model of education provision to the masses. Students then come to class with an expectation from the lecturer regarding their level of preparedness, and an expectation from the student of the ability to use lecture time solely for interactive discussion, question

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Fall 2015 183 time, problem-based activities, problem solving, group work, and other hands-on activities reflective of a social constructivist approach to learning. In this way, students construct their own understanding and educational meaning from social interactions with their peers and lecturers through experiential-learning interactions (Russell-Bennett et al., 2010) that are more cognitively challenging than passive listening in a traditional didactic lecture. With prerecorded lecture content, students can also subsequently revisit lecture material at any time at their own convenience after the lecture for an unlimited amount of viewings. However, prerecorded content alone is not sufficient cause to claim a social constructivist approach to education, nor is it indicative of a flipped classroom (Hodges & Repman, 2011; Lane, 2008). It is the pairing of prerecorded video content of lectures with in-class lecture time devoted to active interaction and task-based student-centered activities that completes the transition from instructivist to constructivist learning conducive to a flipped classroom. Lastly, bridging Vygotsky’s notion of the ZPD can be achieved during in-lecture interactive student sessions. This is done during phase 2 by addressing in class any gaps between what students encounter as familiar versus unfamiliar in the prerecorded video lectures during phase 1. Unfamiliar lecture content can subsequently be discussed by lecturers and with fellow students during the interactive flipped classroom sessions. The purpose of this is to enable individual students to continue to construct meaning from their social educational experiences. While much is known about the importance of social constructivist approaches to learning in higher education (Wertsch, 1984), and the crucial role social constructivism plays in online education (Parker et al., 2013), little is known about how this specifically applies to flipped classrooms, and what this specifically means for the discipline of marketing education.

Linking Social Constructivism to Videography This article argues that flipped classrooms typify all that is represented by social constructivism because learning is self-directed and individuals bridge what is known from their outside-of-class learning with their in-class social learning experiences. As such, what follows is an account of some exploratory qualitative research conducted to address the gap in the marketing education literature to better blend social constructivism theory with

exploratory-based insights from nonmarketing disciplines. This is achieved by using grounded theory to analyze videographic transcripts to aid with the development of a social-constructivist framework for flipped classroom implementation in marketing education.

EXPLORATORY METHOD Exploratory qualitative research is used, particularly the method of videography analysis, to understand the lived experiences of several educational practitioners who have implemented flipped classrooms. The practitioners interviewed in the videographic material were nonmarketing educators. The purpose was to understand the lived experiences of flipped classroom enthusiast educators who have successfully implemented flipped classrooms. From this, the objective was to subsequently develop a theoretical framework in social constructivism, for transitioning flipped classrooms into marketing education. Analyzing the experiences of nonmarketing educators who have used flipped classrooms in their innovative pedagogies facilitates an understanding of how marketing-specific frameworks for implementation can be developed to transition into marketing courses.

Videographic Data Analysis The qualitative research technique of videography has been pioneered as an innovative methodology in marketing and consumer studies increasingly over the last decade (Belk & Kozinets, 2005). There are several advantages that stem from the collection of videographic material as opposed to other qualitative data collection methods. This includes the ability to capture nonverbal communication cues, including body language. In addition, the audio content from the video can be verbatim transcribed for subsequent textual analysis, as with traditional audiorecorded interview material (Belk & Kozinets, 2005). The combination of visual, audio, and textual data in videography provides a very rich medium for analysis, and can yield research-based insights that might not otherwise have been able to be gleaned from other sources. In this study, primary individual interview videographic material was used. The data collected was considered to be primary because it was collected by the primary institution selected for analysis; however, the researcher sourced the publicly available content online as a secondary resource. All videographic

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excerpts were sourced from a large university on the East Coast of Australia and made available to the public online at the time of data collection. The content of the data comprised video-based interviews. The videographies were about lecturers’ experiences of implementing flipped classrooms. Respondents were lecturers sourced across six different courses in the context of having had a flipped classroom pedagogy recently implemented at the time of data collection. Respondents were asked a series of questions about their experiences with flipped classrooms. The purpose of the videographies was to summarize the experiences of those lecturers tasked with flipping their classrooms and to understand the ways individual lecturers accomplished this task in their respective fields. The data is noncommercial and unbiased (consistent questions asked of all interviewees). Interview questions were 1. How has your teaching changed? How did you teach this course? 2. How do students prepare for face-to-face sessions? 3. What do students do during class? 4. How are roles different in the classroom? 5. Why did you change your teaching? 6. What technology did you use? 7. What was student feedback like? Has student engagement improved? 8. What advice do you have for others? The researcher watched the interviews online several times until the content became familiar. The next stage of data collection involved transcribing the verbal content of the videos, verbatim, using standard word-processing software. This process generated a total of 7,835 words across the six individual interviews. The videographic samples were replayed and checked against the transcripts for transcription accuracy. At this stage, content analysis of the text-based transcriptions was used to understand the lived experiences of participants in the sample. The transcribed text was read within and across participant transcripts to understand commonalities and differences between the participant’s descriptions of their understandings of a flipped classroom.

Grounded Theory Process Grounded theory as advocated by Glaser and Strauss (1967), and later, Strauss and Corbin (1990), was used to develop a theoretical framework from the

videographic transcripts linked to social constructivist theories of learning. Grounded theory generally requires that researchers bracket any preconceived notions about the categories of description being generated; however, in this instance, it was useful to couch the interpretation within a social constructivist framework. Such an approach was taken because this research is interpretive and is therefore framed within a nondualist ontology (Säljö, 1979). A nondualist ontology implies that the experiencer (i.e., the student) is inextricably related to that which is experienced (i.e., education). Hence, a student is inextricably related to his or her social learning in a given educational context. Thus, social constructivism provided a theoretical point of departure through which to interpret the qualitative content of the videographic experiences. A key aspect of implementing a grounded theory approach (e.g., Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1990) is the use of theoretical sampling. The aim of theoretical sampling for theoretical relevance is not to obtain a representative sample, which is the drive of positivistic, largely quantitative research. Rather, theoretical sampling for theoretical relevance aims to maximize the sources of variation in the sample to better describe a phenomenon of interest. In this sample, while no marketing educator’s experiences of flipped classroom implementation were represented, there was variation across courses. In addition, the courses being flipped varied in size, level (first-year or advanced), and the experience of the instructor in terms of number of years lecturing. These factors provided variance across the coded categories of description.

Open and Axial Coding Two different types of coding were used to generate categories of description from the videographic transcripts: open coding and axial coding. Open coding was performed by reading through the transcripts several times and creating tentative categories for data based on what emerged from participants’ recall of their experiences of flipped classrooms. These were coded categories of description as a mode of early classification of the transcripts. The purpose of generating these categories was to describe the lived experiences of videographic participants in terms of their qualitative understandings of implementing flipped classrooms

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Fall 2015 185 into their respective disciplines. Exemplar statements were noted from the transcripts as representative of key themes that emerged. These statements were read individually and then again in situ from their place in each transcript to ensure that themes which were identified truly represented the content of the transcripts. This connected to pursuit of the hermeneutic whole in which a statement is read in context (Säljö, 1979). At this stage, the videographic content was again viewed to understand nonverbal cues and other body language signals that may have been salient to the interpretation of the textually based statements from the transcripts. Next, axial coding was implemented once some stability was achieved through the initial open-coding process. Comparisons of similarities and differences within and across the transcripts were sought. Finally, the key dominant themes around flipped classroom implementation that emerged across the transcripts facilitated the development of a framework with three areas: indicative teaching content, flipped learning experiences, and flipped assessment. This framework serves as a series of recommendations and paves a road ahead to marketing-specific implementation of flipped classrooms in an array of courses for marketing educators.

RESULTS The composition of participants involved in the videographic analysis comprised a total of six participants. This was a convenience sample of available videographic content from within the tertiary institution selected for analysis. Table 1 includes a summary of the demographic information of the videographic sample in terms of the particular technologies they reported using to flip their classrooms. From the results of the content analysis, five dominant themes appeared to commonly emerge across the videographic transcripts, as outlined in Table 2.

These themes represent the conceptions of flipped classrooms that were expressed by participants during their videographic interviews. These themes focused on the implications of flipped classrooms for the participants. The themes were identified as (in no particular hierarchical order): changes to teaching, reasons for changing, positive student engagement, successes, and potholes. The first theme, “changes to teaching,” encompasses differences in pedagogy that lecturers either consciously or subconsciously made when transitioning to the flipped classroom. It includes making changes to in-class activities, curriculum content, assessment, and how teaching practices can cater to diverse student populations. The second theme, “reasons for changing,” is linked to the first theme but delves deeper into the underlying mechanisms motivating the flipped classroom from the lecturer’s perspective. It includes acknowledging the need to keep students engaged, provide a richer curriculum, remain competitive in the tertiary sector, and to keep pace with digital and technological changes that revolutionize education. The third theme, “positive student engagement,” reflects lecturers’ perceptions of student engagement as a result of transitioning to the flipped classroom. It reflects students’ positive experiences that flipped classrooms are a more flexible learning style than conventional teaching, that lecturers’ ratings have improved, that students are more engaged, and in-class flipped classroom attendance is increased in comparison with traditional instruction modes. The fourth and fifth themes acknowledge participant recall of “successes” and “potholes” in implementing flipped classrooms, respectively. Across each of these themes, elements of success and failure in both phase 1 (students learning content by themselves beforehand) and phase 2 (the flipped in-class dynamic experience) of the flipped classroom process are acknowledged.

Table 1 Descriptive Information for the Online Videographic Sample No. 1 2 3 4 5 6

Course year

Tools/Technologies required

Second and Third Third First and Advanced Second and Third Fourth Advanced

Blackboard LMS, Scenario Based Learning Blackboard LMS, WebPA, Drupal Blackboard LMS, Online Quizzes Blackboard LMS, Screenflow, Facebook Moodle LMS, Online Interactive Education Blackboard LMS, Web site, DVD

186 Marketing Education Review Table 2 Videographic Content Analysis Results: Dominant Themes Thematic conceptions of the flipped classroom Changes to teaching

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Reasons for changing

Positive student engagement

Successes

Potholes

Indicative citations “I’ve moved away from lectures and tutorials to have an integrated contact session. . . . it’ll be a whole class problem-based discussion, group exercises, informal, and media-driven segments . . . group practical sessions, group problem-solving exercises.” (1) “Tends to open up the class a lot and improve discussion. . . . I find this kind of slightly more informal, looser way of structuring class time allows me to identify issues, appeal to diverse cultural backgrounds and different socioeconomic groups. . . . it helps foster scholarly inquiry . . . active learning.” (1) “We’re trying to deliver a curriculum that has a situation that is as authentic as possible, that represents the type of environment in which you would learn to be a professional.” (2) “We had to provide more authentic curriculum . . . the context had to be situated in a more authentic representation of what practitioners do, not just what students need to know in terms of technical theory . . . students are reflecting [that] they want to be employable, they want to be exposed to design, engaged in innovation and technical excellence.” (2) “Students don’t read . . . the idea was to see why students weren’t reading, what we could do, and how we could get them to read well.” (3) “I just think it’s a more effective way of teaching . . . the two-hour lecture and one-hour tutorial was particularly ineffective for me . . . you pick up very quickly whether students are engaged, and for a large number of students, that is a really ineffective way of teaching” (1) “Generally, it’s positive because this generation of students, they’re used to having the Internet . . . they’ve grown up with it.” (5) “I think Generation Y, they love it . . . we’ve had some very good feedback from the students . . . saying that the resources are wonderful and that makes a big difference.” (6) “The students are ready to go, they’re excited, they’re talking to each other . . . we have a community of practice where students work together and they’re engaged.” (3) “They love it . . . teaching ratings have never been higher, they’re pushing 5 now and that’s as high as it can be.” (4) “They like the fact that they don’t have to come into class and hear me babble on for two hours about something . . . they come in to have the information reviewed and to investigate a critical aspect of it and try to hit some gaps that they have in their knowledge, and they appreciate that.” (1) “I created an online space for them called ‘Things that make you want to scream,’ and that was a place for them to vent—so we kept a finger on what was going on there.” (2) “There was also a weekly meeting with tutors where they could communicate issues and gaps. So as we figured out things students were struggling with, we created resources and that’s all online now.” (2) “As soon as we didn’t test something, students came to class unprepared.” (3) “A large part [of implementing the flipped classroom] was relationship building with different academics; I needed to have everybody on board, I couldn’t have people working against me.” (2) “The communications in Blackboard for the first six weeks was [sic] basically berating them to interact more than just on Facebook. I said ‘I’m over here, I’m not on your Facebook page; if you want to know how this course operates and how to get a 7 or 6 you’re going to have to come over to Blackboard whether you like it or not.’”

A Marketing-Based Framework for Implementation Given the key themes observed from this videographic analysis of nonmarketing educators, a framework specific to implementing flipped classrooms into the marketing curriculum is provided. Table 3 presents a series of recommended steps focused on teaching, learning,

and assessment strategies for a variety of common marketing courses. These activities could also be adapted to the postgraduate level. The educational activities are suggested based on a review of Gerstein’s (2012) model of flipped classrooms, in which four phases to learning are indicated: (1) concept exploration (“what”), (2) meaning making (“so what”), (3) demonstration/application (“now what”),

Fall 2015 187 Table 3 A Marketing-Specific Framework for Flipped Classroomsa Some indicative marketing courses Introductory Marketing

Indicative topics/Readings for teaching content • Four Ps

• Branding/Brand equity (Keller, 1993)

• Students have an online blog to support (first-year) marketing students • Team-based activities in class; reciprocal teaching • Guest speakers (marketers) from industry

• Services marketing

• Case study

• Real-life example of innovation

• Watch movie as a class; analyze and discuss • Role-playing games of service failure/recovery

• Extended marketing mix

New Product and Service Development

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Services Marketing

• IHIP Paradigm (Lovelock & Gummeson, 2004)

• Cocreation (Vargo & Lusch, 2004) Marketing Research

• Qualitative methods: netnography (Kozinets, 2010); videography (Belk & Kozinets, 2005) • Quantitative methods

Customer Relationship Management

Entrepreneurial Marketing Sustainable Marketing

Indicative flipped learning experience

• Marketing metrics (CLV) (e.g., Rust, Lemon, & Zeithaml, 2004) • Retention/Acquisition (e.g., Reinartz & Kumar, 2003)

• Entrepreneurial marketing strategies (Weerawardena, 2003) • Corporate social responsibility • Ethics in advertising (e.g., Mizerski, 1995)

• Interview employees and customers about service failure/ recovery • Industry Project: Solve a research question for a real company (teamwork or individual project); build industry partnerships • Conduct a netnography in an online community, develop a videography of consumer behavior as a team project • Class debate: To retain or acquire new customers based on financial data? • Customer data for team-based marketing games/ managerial decisions: Retain or acquire? • Student-simulated markets and student entrepreneurial business • As a team, choose a product with unethical packaging and production; develop a proposal for the marketing manager to improve it

Indicative flipped assessment • Online CML Quizzes • Participatory marks for online blog • Develop a marketing pitch for a product with latent demand (funerals); present to industry reps. • Develop a new product: prototype, β-testing • Develop a new service: blueprinting, proposal • Student teams select a service industry, develop a team-based solution to failure-recovery strategies • Report interview results on service topic of choice • Present team videos in a class movie presentation, show results to public (faculty, industry reps.); write a report on the netnography findings • Write a Research Proposal, collect primary data, run data analyses using quantitative research methods • Simulate financial data from companies, compute metrics • Interview marketing managers about their customer relationship management strategies See QUTopia (Russell-Bennet, Rundle-Thiele, & Kuhn, 2010)— create a real-time market • Develop an advertising campaign in a team (print, video, online social media) to raise awareness of sustainable marketing practices

Note. IHIP = Intangibility, Heterogeneity, Inseparability, Perishability; CLV = customer lifetime value; CML = computer moderated learning. a Students learn prerecorded lecture content before coming to class for the flipped learning experience.

and (4) experiential engagement (“experience”). As such, concept exploration occurs in phase 1 while meaning making, demonstration/application, and experience are the focus of the suggested marketing

activities in Table 3, as these are the substantive direction of the second phase, the flipped experience. Gerstein (2012) recommends that for flipped classrooms, concept exploration includes video/audio

188 Marketing Education Review recordings, content-rich Web sites, simulations, and readings (phase 1). Meaning making requires students to make reflective podcasts, respond to quizzes, use blogs, and participate in online discussions. Demonstration/application can be via formal or informal assessment of flipped learning via personalized projects, problem-based learning, presentations, or role plays. Experience requires games, experiments, or community projects. Table 3 applies these concepts to examples of marketing courses with suggested assessments.

DISCUSSION

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Theoretical Implications In a flipped classroom environment with unconventional delivery modes, marketing educators need to make sure that each of these three interfaces is related to maximize student learning outcomes. Particularly for the in-lecture hands-on task-based interactive learning experiences, students need to feel that content is related to the prerecorded lecture content learning that they have done, otherwise they may not see the point in the prior preparation. For this reason, the marketingspecific framework in Table 3 was focused around these three interlinked areas of teaching, learning, and assessment to provide a holistic view of the implementation process. Ideally, to employ a truly constructivist approach to flipped classrooms, educators must ensure that the marketing theories taught in the weekly prerecorded lectures are extended by the in-lecture activities, such that the activities cannot be completed without knowledge of the prerecorded content, as suggested in Table 3. In this way, the bridge between Vygotskian notions of the ZPD (Wertsch, 1984) can be addressed by educators during the interactive activities, providing in-class scaffolding for students when they strike activities that challenge them in unfamiliar ways in the flipped classroom. As one participant commented: If something goes wrong [during the flipped classroom experience] in terms of students not understanding content, they know I’ll be there to help them out. This scaffolding safety net of the lecturer’s presence during the in-class lecture time is the central way to bridge learning to the Vygotskian notion of the ZPD, to encourage student development and academic

achievement. Fellow students and the peer cohort in team-based activities and group work exercises are also a resource at the lecturer’s disposal to use in the scaffolding process. Part of this innovative pedagogical process facilitates building resilient and independent learners who are self-directed and increasingly ready for the real challenges they will face as future marketing graduates in the business world. The exploratory videographic results and marketingspecific framework for flipped classroom implementation presented in this article are grounded in social constructivist theory. Social constructivist theories have much to offer the emerging literature on flipped classrooms and it is important to infuse marketing education with theoretically grounded frameworks. The benefits of considering a social constructivist theoretical perspective in the flipped classroom is that it facilitates a student-centered approach to the learning experiences, which are necessarily experiential and hands on (Wertsch, 1984). The objective of flipping the classroom so that lecture content is prerecorded and covered by students as a form of self-directed learning outside of class frees up in-lecture time for experiential-learning activities where students have minimal lecturer instruction and are therefore encouraged to construct their own meaning from interactions with other peers (Parker et al., 2013). In this way, more effective teaching models and more innovative pedagogies can be implemented. The intention is to move teachers from instructivist roles to constructivist roles. As one of the participants commented: I’m not a lecturer anymore, I’m no longer standing in front of the class. . . . I’m going around the class trying to give as much feedback and direct input as I can.

Practical Advice for Educators In each of the six interviews, participants were enthusiastic and passionate about the implementation of a flipped classroom. Passion is crucial to the success of flipped classrooms because, ultimately, the more novel the experience, the more potential there is for people to resist change (Waddell & Sohal, 1998). For example, Oreg (2003) finds people can resist change due to a reluctance to lose control, cognitive rigidity, a lack of psychological resilience, intolerance of the adjustment period required for the change, having preference for

Fall 2015 189 low stimulation and low novelty, and a reluctance to give up old habits. Thus, passionate marketing educators who are keen to implement pedagogical change with flipped classrooms are required for success (Ford, Ford, & D’Amelio, 2008). As noted with the first theme, resistance to change and how this can be overcome was echoed by one participant who expressed that a large part of changing the pedagogy to flipped classrooms was relationship building with different academics. I needed to have everybody on board. I couldn’t have people working against me so we needed to work through the conversation about what were the most important things that students needed to know, and how were we going to do that, and it took a lot of time.

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Another participant commented that change to practice in a flipped classroom required that you’ve got to make resources and changes that are student focused. A resource or change isn’t going to be taken up by students unless they like it or enjoy it, so you’ve got to look at ways that increase student learning, and work towards what you can do for your students, which is get the best learning out for them. That’s got to be the focus. To come to fruition, implementing a flipped classroom requires a significant investment of time and financial resources. To ensure positive student engagement (theme 3), there is the requirement to prerecord lectures ahead of schedule so that students can access the lecture content at least a week in advance. To follow a truly social constructivist approach, however, it is recommended that prerecorded lecture content be made available to students for the whole semester. One of the participants indicated that educators should start early, while another expressed that in order to overcome the potential burdensome task of developing content, educators should work with colleagues . . . don’t do the whole load yourself. Recognize that it is going to be a big investment at the start but [in future] it might save you time, online quizzes might save you time, and that investment is worthwhile. Finally, to secure successes (theme 4r) and avoid potholes (theme 5), a few recommendations can be made based on interviewees’ experiences. When lecture content is prerecorded, there are additional issues for marketing educators to consider besides those normally encountered in face-to-face education. This includes

practical issues such as the need for no background or “white” noise during prerecording, the need for a welllit room, and to consider whether students see lecturers and lecture slides on-screen simultaneously. All the hard work that goes into preparing flipped classroom prerecorded lectures can be wasted if audio or image quality is poor. Lessons learned from effective videoconferencing can be applied here, where suggestions are for educators to ensure good audibility, a clear speaking voice, and clear lighting on both the speaker and the lecture slides (if shown during the recording) (Snowball, 2014). One participant commented on the use of a backlight to address lighting problems and the use of a lapel microphone if necessary during recording.

Limitations As with all research, there are a few limitations of the present study. First, it is acknowledged that the exploratory analysis was based on a small sample of six videographic interviews (from a single tertiary institution). Although qualitative research is generally based on significantly smaller samples than quantitative studies, maximum variation in responses is usually observed at around 20 participants (Sandberg, 2000). This qualitative study was exploratory only, and the videographic material in this research was all that was available from the single institution that was sourced. However, further research is needed with a larger sample across multiple institutions. In addition, response bias could be compounded by the fact that all participants were advocates of flipped classrooms. However, it was not the objective of this article to conduct a large-scale empirical study of marketing or nonmarketing educators’ experiences with flipped classrooms, but rather to raise a need for more theoretical and scholarly work in the area of flipped classroom implementation specific to marketing education. Second, the research was based on recommendations for marketing practitioners, but in the absence of primary student data, no objective measures were available on student engagement with flipped classrooms. Consistent with the recommendations for marketing practitioners that were previously presented, future research should examine student engagement and student satisfaction with course content and teaching in a flipped marketing classroom. For marketing educators who are yet to transition to this innovative pedagogy

190 Marketing Education Review or who are considering flipping their course content, a pre- and post-design is a clear choice to track changes across student cohort satisfaction and engagement prior to and after the implementation of the flipped classroom.

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Future Research Future research that is empirical and potentially grounded in other theoretical frameworks such as experiential learning could include an examination, either quantitatively or qualitatively, of potential obstacles and factors that could influence flipped classroom implementation. These obstacles could include aspects such as class size, attendance, time constraints, or assessment rules. An additional issue is what exactly the impact is on students in terms of what lecturers expect students to know or do after having participated in a flipped experience. An important issue for further consideration beyond the scope of the current article is what are the learning outcomes for students partaking in flipped classroom learning experiences and whether these differ substantively from traditional instructional delivery modes. Empirical student-based quantitative data on grades and satisfaction is the key here. Finally, the brief exploratory qualitative research in this article highlights the need for much more empirical work that is more in depth and large-scale. For example, future empirical research in the area of flipped classroom implementation in marketing could address what particular student learning outcomes are maximized by flipped classrooms and engaging content. Controlled experiments could be used to understand specific instructional methods typically incorporated into flipped classrooms, including prerecorded lecture content and hands-on classroom learning activities. This could produce more compelling evidence of direct learning outcomes and student-lecturer reactions across face-to-face versus separated service delivery modes, such as those experienced in a flipped classroom.

CONCLUSION In conclusion, this article has provided a theoretical and exploratory research grounding in social constructivism for the implementation of flipped classrooms in marketing education. Flipped classrooms are one way

to engage students through team-based activities and interactive, hands-on learning experiences that promote active rather than passive learning (Demetry, 2010). Suggestions for marketing-specific implementation were provided, facilitating avenues for further research on this important pedagogical topic. Marketing educators seeking to infuse their teaching praxis with this innovative pedagogy now have a preliminary framework based on lessons learned from nonmarketing educators who have experienced flipped classroom implementation. It is anticipated that this article will open up debate and scholarly discussion about the appropriate theoretical frameworks that can be integrated to better understand the impacts flipped classrooms can have on student engagement and student satisfaction with marketing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author thanks three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

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