The Flipped Classroom model for teaching Conditional Random Fields in an NLP course

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of the flipped classroom approach to teach Conditional Random Fields in an NLP course, highlighting student learning outcomes and reflections on the method.

Contribution

It presents a novel application of the flipped classroom model to a specific NLP topic, with detailed activities and evaluation insights.

Findings

Students learned about Conditional Random Fields effectively.

The flipped classroom was rewarding for some students.

Identified shortcomings and proposed solutions for the method.

Abstract

In this article, we show and discuss our experience in applying the flipped classroom method for teaching Conditional Random Fields in a Natural Language Processing course. We present the activities that we developed together with their relationship to a cognitive complexity model (Bloom's taxonomy). After this, we provide our own reflections and expectations of the model itself. Based on the evaluation got from students, it seems that students learn about the topic and also that the method is rewarding for some students. Additionally, we discuss some shortcomings and we propose possible solutions to them. We conclude the paper with some possible future work.