Sunday, November 8, 2015

[ED257A] Week 6: Flipped Classroom and Distance/Online Learning

The Flipped Classroom

Source: https://21centuryedtech.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/flipped.jpg


This week's reading is based off of:
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Miller, 2015 Ch. 9 "Putting it all together"

Min Kyu Kim, So Mi Kim, Otto Khera, Joan Getman. "The experience of three flipped classrooms in an urban university: an exploration of design principles." Internet and Higher Education 22 (2014) 37–50
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The flipped classroom introduces a new way of instruction in which the student partakes in lecture outside of the classroom and problem solving during class time, and the teacher's role is more facilitative. The surge in the flipped classroom concept has gained momentum with the burgeoning of online technologies like Khan Academy.

I personally am excited about this new model for education. The flipped classroom allows students to pace and personalize their learning. If there is a concept they are unfamiliar with, they can spend the time to understand it without worrying that the instructor has moved on to a new concept. Having the teacher become more of a facilitator of activities during classroom improves face-to-face interaction, as students are directly interacting with the instructor instead of (passively) absorbing information. Additionally, through the usage of digital technologies, the course content may be made available to anyone else with access to internet. I think this idea is particularly powerful. People in regions with fewer educational resources or privilege can freely access this information.

As a student, I appreciated the flipped classroom model. In my undergraduate studies, I took a course on electronic devices that borrowed from the flipped classroom. We watched lectures outside of classroom and submitted questions we had on the lecture. During class, our professor would address all of our questions and go over other interesting aspects about electronic devices. We had homework assignments outside of lecture as well. There were of course some tradeoffs. In exchange for more interactivity during lecture, we had less mathematical rigor in our learning of electronic devices. However, as an introductory class for learning the conceptual operation of electronic devices, I found the flipped classroom format to be well-suited to the task. Of course, the flipped classroom is not the panacea to all challenges in instruction. I think the traditional lecture style is still appropriate for certain subjects, such as those that are discussion based or math heavy. Nevertheless, the flipped classroom offers another tool with which to instruct.

The techniques and tools presented in Miller and Kim, et al. were applicable to both the flipped classroom and instruction in general. Kim, et al. list useful principles for designing a class, which are reiterated here, and paralleled with ideas I have had or discussed with others. Many are being implemented in the course I am currently helping to teach (MAT 188). To reiterate, MAT 188 is an overview course about materials science in the context of energy technologies. The goal of the course is to expose non-materials scientists to how materials scientists think about the world around them. Although MAT 188 is not structured to be a flipped class, I think many of the same design principles listed in Kim, et al. apply here. Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions!

  • Provide an opportunity for students to gain first exposure prior to class
    • HW questions to preview next week's lecture, going over the class syllabus, presenting a course map at the beginning of each lecture
  • Provide an incentive for students to prepare for class
    • extra credit on HW (e.g., choose 3 of the 4 questions to complete; the fourth problem is graded optionally for extra credit)
  • Provide a mechanism to assess student understanding, e.g., low stakes quizzes
    • weekly quizzes to gauge immediate comprehension of the lecture (e.g., main idea, muddiest point) and weekly HW, doing a lecture recap
  • Provide clear connections between in-class and out-of-class activities
    • present course objectives and agenda in syllabus, inviting guest lecturers to discuss a topic related to the course (e.g., their career path, current/active research field, where they envision the field going next, where the research is found in everyday applications)
  • Provide clearly defined and well-structured guidance
    • having a lecture outline at the beginning of each lecture, having a defined format of the lecture, offering extensive office hours
  • Provide facilitation for building a learning community
    • have the students be responsible for a topic for a final review session where it is presented small groups
  • Provide enough time for students to carry out the assignments-
    • introducing final projects weeks in advance (i.e., first heads-up, then more formal choice of group/topics, and periodic check-ups)
  • Provide prompt/adaptive feedback on individual or group works
    • mid-term evaluations, weekly quizzes for determining comprehension right after lecture
  • Provide technologies familiar and easy to access
    • currently not as applicable, as we mostly use video, powerpoint, and in-class demonstrations of technologies

I am particularly excited about the potential of Gauchocast, 


a tool for recording online lectures. Below is a screenshot for the Fall 2015 version of Quantum Mechanics II. Not shown are the note taking abilities (text-based only; eventually adding in equation editing, like based on the syntax of LaTeX, would be a cool addition). 


Gauchocast allows you to see the headshot of the instructor, a set of slides and the timing of each slide (which is done automatically, based on the title of each slide). Although a transcript option isn't available yet, there is still much potential in this tool. While this doesn't replace actual face-to-face interaction with the instructor, it still offers the ability to see instructor as s/he is speaking about the subject matter. My favorite part is the fact that you basically have a full record of the lecture and is text searchable later on. This makes studying more streamlined for students. But this also applies to instructors as well. A well-made video lecture would save much time in the future for preparing for lectures and would be easy to keep track of what was covered in previous years. I hope that more professors choose to use this tool in the coming years and see if it's a suitable course to what they are teaching. 

2 comments:

  1. You mentioned that there was less mathematical rigor in your flipped classroom experience and that this might not be the best model for math heavy courses. Could the instructor have covered the math material in the video lecture (what about that glass video Dr. Michael’s showed us in talking about GauchoSpace), or perhaps spent time focusing on it during the face-to-face meeting? Or would this not really work for students? I admit I am totally ignorant when it comes to math in the undergraduate classroom. I know it would probably not be as effective (as you note) in a reading and discussion religious studies class, so it might be similar case in your math courses.

    In thinking about your MAT 188 class, would this be a course where lecture (or some lecture) could be provided outside of class (GauchoCast) and class time could be devoted to discussion of questions, guest lecture, case studies, etc.?

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the feedback!
      Doing the math in a video lecture is certainly one strategy to introduce more mathematica rigor (and the LearningGlass technology looks like a cool technology to do that!). I like the idea of doing a flipped classroom model in the future when we have developed the material for it. One possible challenge I foresee is keeping up with new technologies for energy and the need to constantly update the course content. Since the goal of the class is to introduce students to the material science field, having more time devoted to discussion would be a great addition in the next iteration of the class.

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