Process:
I collaborated with Carla Jagger to create the lesson on ‘Flipped Classrooms’. Here is a breakdown of the steps we went through to do so:
1. We had gone over the material which had been posted on Carmen related to the topic.
2. Each of us generated our own questions, looked for additional resources that could enhance understanding of the concept, and came up with possible activities that would require application of the learned material.
3. During our meeting we realized some of the questions/activities that we had come up with individually were overlapping. Carla had designed an activity to start off the session (rotation of index cards). We decided that we would keep preliminary discussion questions reserved for this activity. I had found a video (Salman Khan’s TED talk) which I thought could help us think about issues related to flipped classrooms above and beyond what we had read for class. Carla and I had decided that we would get into the specific issues related to flipped classrooms (e.g., assessment and social equity in education) after showing the video to the class. We wanted to end the session with an activity that would encourage everyone to think about how they might go about utilizing this form of pedagogy in their own content areas. Both of us agreed that we wanted our peers to think about how they would use this model in their own content areas. Considering that flipped classrooms allow educators in different disciplines the possibility of collaborating with each other, we planned an activity that involved teaming up with a classmate from a different discipline and coming up with an idea of how they might create an interdisciplinary lesson using the flipped model. We had planned on closing the lesson with a discussion on what plans they would have in place for students who might not be responding well to the flipped model.
Synopsis of main concepts:
Flipped classroom involves students listening to lectures outside the classroom in the form of a video and engaging in application of knowledge while they are in the classroom. It is important to note that it is simply not a reversal of what happens in a traditional classroom – teachers delivering content knowledge in the classroom and students doing their homework at home. Instead, the idea is to utilize the class time to engage in deeper interaction with peers and the instructor as they engage in higher order cognitive work.
One of the reasons flipped environments are considered beneficial is that it allows learners to adjust their own pace of learning and gives teachers a chance to focus their attention on learners who need more help during class time. Students who grasp material faster than others can surge ahead without getting frustrated while waiting for others to catch up and students who have difficulty understanding the content have to freedom to repeat the video lectures as many times as they want to make sure they get it. In addition to catering to individual needs of learners, flipped environments are often projected as a better way to utilize class time than traditional lecture based teaching.
There are some principles that characterize best practice when it comes to flipping a classroom: students gain exposure to material before they come to class, there is incentive to prepare for class, assessment to measure student learning, establishing a link between in class and out of class activity, structured guidance, adequate time for completing work, building a learning community, immediate feedback, and providing accessible and easy to use technology. Despite there being some common principles, flipped environments look different across discipline areas and across varying pedagogical styles, making the setting quite complex in terms of the variability that is possible.
Lecture Capture is any technology that allows recording lectures so that they are available to people afterwards. They are not meant to replace face-to-face instruction; instead they are an option for those learners who are unable to attend lectures in person to have access to them. Even though Lecture Capture involves recorded lectures, they should not be confused with flipping the classroom as class time remains devoted to lecturing/instructing.
Both flipping the classroom and lecture capture allow multiple educators to collaborate within and across disciplines, creating the possibility of increasing a spirit of cooperation among educators. Finally, one of the prevailing challenges in recording lectures across both these applications of technology is that it is accompanied by a threat to intellectual property of the creators of the material.
Discussion questions:
1. Flipped environments assume that children will be able to regulate their learning for themselves; is this assumption that all students will demonstrate similar self-regulated learning skills justified? What supports might be needed in flipped settings in order to foster self-regulation in learners?
2. According to Sams and Bergman, assessment in a flipped setting involves flexibility and to a certain extent subjective judgment on the part of the teacher; in an atmosphere where there is increasing emphasis on meeting standards, where do flipped classrooms and the flexibility they seem to entail stand?
3. Sams and Bergman also mention that the quality of the video is not that important as long as the message is clear and the video serves it main purpose (to deliver content knowledge). Where do you stand on this? If you were a student in a flipped classroom, how much would the quality of the video matter to you?
4. Are there specific qualities that the teacher needs to have before adopting this style of pedagogy?
5. What kind of teacher and student supports do you think needs to be in place if flipped environments were to be used on a wider scale?
6. What are the factors that an educator might need to consider before implementing a flipped classroom?
7. If flipping the classroom yields better achievement scores than face-to-face instruction, is it simply because of the incorporation of technology that learning seems to improve or are there other variables involved (e.g., increased instruction time)?
8. Sometimes flipped environments are also referred to as blended environments; however, there is no agreement on what blended environments are in the literature at this point of time and the lack of clarity in what is meant by a particular term can cause difficulties when conducting educational research. How would you define a flipped environment?
9. There is an emphasis on providing incentives to students so that they listen to the lectures before coming to class. These incentives involve giving them a quiz at the beginning of class. The focus is on motivating students with extrinsic incentives (e.g. grades). Do you think educators can foster intrinsic motivation in flipped environments?
Videos:
Salman Khan, is the founder of Khan Academy – a free online education platform and non- profit organization. In this video he talks about the potential of videos to revolutionize education as we know it and specifically addresses the issue of flipped classrooms. In addition, he delves into issues such as student assessment and expansion of access to education, within the context of flipped classrooms.
Activities:
1. Based on the article by Kim, Kim, Khera & Getman (2014), we see that flipped environment looks different across different content areas. If you were to do this for your discipline, how would you do it? (Feel free to use the internet).
2. How would you arrange for a back-up plan for students who are not responding well in your flipped classroom?
3. Flipped settings allow instructors the opportunity to collaborate with each other. Pair up with a classmate and try and see if you can generate ideas for a lesson combining your content areas. (Feel free to use the Internet)
Reflection:
Our lesson was planned quite well and the feedback we received corroborated that. Overall, we were satisfied with our session.
However, we could have managed the time better. Especially in the light of the feedback given to us, I feel that instead of showing the entire video we might have shown only the parts which we had identified as adding to our understanding. This would have given us the opportunity to devote more time to the first activity and left room for us to engage in the final activity which would have involved application.
The first in-class activity (index cards) involved students sharing their thoughts on various aspects of the flipped classroom. This activity served two goals of formative assessment: one, participants presented their views on the topic informally indicating their familiarity with the content; two, through a follow-up discussion we strengthened our understanding of what flipped classrooms entail.
The video (Salman Khan’s TED talk) that we showed complemented a video that had been assigned as preparation for class (Sams and Bergman talk). I felt that this compelled all of us to compare different perspectives on student assessment in a flipped classroom and think about how each of us felt about the issue (Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy: Analyze). The follow-up discussion succeeded in tracing the development of participants’ views on fundamental aspects to more complex aspects of the flipped classroom.
If we had managed the time more effectively and had been successful at incorporating the last activity which involved creating a flipped lesson we would have been able to satisfy the final objective under Bloom’s Taxonomy – creating. In addition, this could also have served as a summative assessment. The peer feedback indicates that this was an element that our lesson was missing.
To sum up – we had a plan with clear learning objectives and we translated our plan into action quite smoothly. If I could do something differently if we were to do this again, I would cut down on the time spent on showing the video and making sure we managed to implement our plan to completion.