How do you flip a classroom?
Any classroom involves the educators concerned considering a number
of factors; materials, delivery, self-study, assessments plus the
usual aims and objectives of a course or module. There is no one way
to do this and the same applies to the flipped-classroom. It can be
as simple as videoing lectures for students to view before a class
and setting 'homework' for students to complete during class time.
This may work in some scenarios, calculus perhaps, but is far from
ideal for most courses particularly at a higher education level.
The
table above shows how an educator can start to think about the type
of information that is being presented followed by when and how that
information will be disseminated to the students. Specifically the
change from practice exercises to open-ended or group based
problem-solving in a class. Thus giving the 'sage' a chance to come
down from the stage and interact with the students giving them
dynamic feedback as opposed to marking a homework assignment with a
red pen. Prober and Heath ask us why, in an era of video and freely available resources such as
youtube and TED, we would waste time on a traditional lecture. In
some ways there is a simple answer to this “putting dozens,
hundreds or even thousands of students in a room with a professor –
endures because it makes economic sense.” In other ways the answer is far less simplistic. A lecture is traditional, therefore it is easy, so if we are going to flip our classrooms we need to know how to do it in a way that enhances the student experience. To change the world you have to know you are going to make it better and you have to have a plan. Which takes us back to the question of how do you flip a classroom. There are several options;
1.
Record the lecture that would have been given in person and encourage the students to watch it before class. Then give the students case studies, group based tasks and discussions to do and use the classroom time to enter into face-to-face discussions with. On the positive side it allows students to watch the lecture at their own pace and in their own time. On the negative side it almost doubles the amount of time required from the lecturer and in addition to that one of the reasons for flipping a classroom is student engagement. The table below shows that students brain activity levels in a lecture are similar to when they are watching TV and lower than when they are sleeping. Providing a full lecture to watch through as screen is not necessarily going to improve that.
1.
Record the lecture that would have been given in person and encourage the students to watch it before class. Then give the students case studies, group based tasks and discussions to do and use the classroom time to enter into face-to-face discussions with. On the positive side it allows students to watch the lecture at their own pace and in their own time. On the negative side it almost doubles the amount of time required from the lecturer and in addition to that one of the reasons for flipping a classroom is student engagement. The table below shows that students brain activity levels in a lecture are similar to when they are watching TV and lower than when they are sleeping. Providing a full lecture to watch through as screen is not necessarily going to improve that.
2.
Students are asked to prepare for classes by engaging with material before a class and are discouraged from being passive learners by the expectation that they come to class with a question or engage in an on-line discussion. Professors/teachers are therefore also able to prepare answers to questions that have been received beforehand. This may, in many respects, mean they are coming to class and 'lecturing' however the subject will have been created in response to student questions. In this scenario the information provided to the students can be as limited or as varied as the faculty's imagination. Heath and Prober suggest that based on accepted time frames for student concentration teachers could provide 10-15 minute online presentations that cover the basic concepts with reading material and embedded quizzes which provide instant feedback. Of course in every subject there are is a wealth of resources on the web which, combined with tailor made videos from a 'sage', can provide a bank of knowledge that can then be reused and revisited many times over.
Despite the differing suggestions for pre-class work all sources suggest that the flipped-classroom should have interactive lessons based around case studies, real life problems and scenarios which students are encouraged to solve using all available resources. This may well include the on-line information as well as the faculty and their peers thus greatly increasing the breadth and depth of knowledge which students can apply to their problems.
References
Medical Education re-imagined; a call to action
Lecture halls without lectures - a proposal for medical education
How flipping the classroom can improve the traditional lecture
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