Putting the Questions First—Flipped Classroom Methods in Animal Ethics Online Teaching and Its Evaluation

Abstract

Despite the challenges the pandemic presented for university teaching, it opened up opportunities to set up and explore digital teaching formats like never before. This paper presents a case study of teaching introductory animal ethics in a digital format with flipped-classroom methods. The Interactive Literature Lecturing Format (ILLF) was designed along the following criteria: 1. Conformity with students’ varying educational needs; 2. Consistent high level of interaction; 3. Maximum transparency in an application-oriented exam; 4. No further contribution to the workload of the teaching staff; 5. Flexibility regarding online or on-site conversions. Rather than provide the students with input in lecture sessions, the ILLF presents students with selected literature and a list of structured questions. This literature questionnaire serves as the main didactic element that guides the knowledge transfer, the structure of the sessions and the exam. This paper reviews the outcome of the redesigning process and the steps we took to implement it. To discuss the overall quality of the format from a student’s perspective, the data from the systematically conducted students’ evaluation (n = 65) are interpreted using quantitative and qualitative methods. Bringing these results together with the perspective of the teaching staff, the following question is discussed: did the ILLF meet these criteria? This case study explores the potential and limits of flipped-classroom methods for applied ethics teaching in a university setting.

Keywords

• didactics of ethics
• animal ethics
• flipped classroom
• online teaching
• empirical evaluation