Flipping the CS1 and CS2 classrooms in Central Asia

In this paper, we report on our approach and preliminary observations of transitioning to a flipped classroom model of instruction for our first-year undergraduate programming courses. We believe that our situation is rather unique, in that we are doing so in the context of a newly-formed, Western-style university in Central Asia. Before the transition, our introductory programming course (in C), and our data structures course (in Java), were taught in a more traditional lecture-lab setting. Now, all lesson content is contained in online video lectures, which are embedded in our WordPress course pages. In-class time is now spent almost exclusively on students working through programming exercises in pairs, getting help from instructors and teaching assistants as needed. Our primary motivation in moving to a flipped classroom was to allow us to effectively cover material in more depth in our lectures, without sacrificing class time where we wanted students to focus more on hands-on activities. A secondary motivation was to allow us to deliver the course content in a consistent manner across multiple sections, from semester to semester. This has been a challenge given the steadily growing numbers of students in these courses, coupled with the continual additions and changes in faculty members and TAs. As part of our preliminary study, we compared student performance in terms of final exam scores before and after the transition, and collected feedback from students using questionnaires. We did note a slight, though not significant improvement in exam scores. The student feedback was very positive, and indicated a high level of student involvement with the new approach.