U. S. History Course Redesign Using Flipped Instruction

The goal was to redesign the history survey course to improve student competencies and reduce DFW occurrences. This course has a fairly high repeatable grades rate for a general education course. Students need strategies that will help them learn and overcome issues that keep them from succeeding. The course was changed from a lecture format to a "flipped" format where students will do more classroom activities than I previously used. Students formed groups to debate significant issues in American history, such as the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Allowing students to debate important issues helped them understand those issues in more depth than they would if I simply lectured to them about those issues.