Flipping learning is big in education. It will be big in corporate learning. Let’s not blow it.
How do you flip learning?
Khan Academy is the poster child for flipped learning. Sal Khan has produced more than 3,000 short videos on a variety of topics. Students watch the videos before coming to class. In the classroom, they sort out what they’ve learned and do what used to be called homework. Millions of students are learning this way. Recently, Stanford professors offered a couple of courses in this fashion and were surprised when a third of a million people enrolled.
Flipping makes a ton a sense. The learner can watch the mini-lectures when it’s convenient to do so. The learner controls the pace by pausing, replaying, or fast-forwarding. In all likelihood, the presentation by the enthusiastic Salmaan Khan or a popular Stanford prof is going to be more engaging than your local school teacher or grad student teaching assistant. The video can provide content in small, digestible pieces. Once it’s in the can, the video can be replayed again and again. And of course, video delivered online scales without an increase in cost.
More important for learning outcomes, the time spent in class can be put to more productive use. Learners convene to get answers to questions, discuss examples, put what they’ve learned in context, debate, explore, and extend their knowledge. Instead of passively listening to an instructor, they actively engage the material. Instructors, freed of the need to mouth the words of lessons, focus on helping learners understand things and coaching individuals. These activities can take place online, and people can learn from one another in virtual communities and support groups.
Flipping Stanford
In a Science Times essay, “Death Knell for the Lecture: Technology as a Passport to Personalized Education,” Daphne Koller described how Stanford University has flipped traditional courses:
At Stanford, we recently placed three computer science courses online, using a similar format. Remarkably, in the first four weeks, 300,000 students registered for these courses, with millions of video views and hundreds of thousands of submitted assignments.
What can we learn from these successes? First, we see that video content is engaging to students — many of whom grew up on YouTube — and easy for instructors to produce.
Second, presenting content in short, bite-size chunks, rather than monolithic hourlong lectures, is better suited to students’ attention spans, and provides the flexibility to tailor instruction to individual students. Those with less preparation can dwell longer on background material without feeling uncomfortable about how they might be perceived by classmates or the instructor.
Conversely, students with an aptitude for the topic can move ahead rapidly, avoiding boredom and disengagement. In short, everyone has access to a personalized experience that resembles individual tutoring.
Watching passively is not enough. Engagement through exercises and assessments is a critical component of learning. These exercises are designed not just to evaluate the student’s learning, but also, more important, to enhance understanding by prompting recall and placing ideas in context.
Moreover, testing allows students to move ahead when they master a concept, rather than when they have spent a stipulated amount of time staring at the teacher who is explaining it.
An article in Wired, The Stanford Educational Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever, describes the wildly popular course on artificial intelligence taught by Stanford professors Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig:
Does it make any sense that school is generally a place where people come together to sit and listen to the person at the front of the room? It generally doesn’t make the most sense to get a group of people together to sit and stare. What if instead, educators spent class time doing and homework time for the watching of lessons/lectures. The other benefit of this is that these can be viewed and reviewed anytime/anywhere. The result is a lively bustling classroom where students can spend their time learning, talking, doing.
I fear that flipping learning in corporations may meet the same nasty fate as eLearning.
In the early days, 1999-2000, many of us believed that eLearning was the forefront of a renaissance in learning. Not only could people learn at their own pace, whenever they wanted, they’d also be able to ask questions, learn with peers, join communities, access job aids, contact mentors, and create personal learning paths. Workers could attend virtual classes without leaving the workplace. Software would create personalized learning experiences by assembling custom configurations of learning objects.
The eLearning dream didn’t last long. Companies proved more interested in reducing instructor head-count and facilities costs than in improving learning outcomes. Training departments put PowerPoint presentations on their intranets and acted as if people could learn from them. Vendors put deadly-dull page-turner courses online and called it eLearning.
When times were tough, training departments slashed budgets by replacing face-to-face instruction with online reading. They failed to follow through with the discussions, practice, social processing, and reinforcement that makes lessons stick. It didn’t work. Most eLearning is ineffective drudgery.
That’s my nightmare about flipping learning in the corporation, that organizations will once again confuse exposure to content with learning. It’s great to replace lectures with video clips — IF you retain the opportunity for people to ask questions, interact with the material, practice what they’ve learned, collaborate with others, and periodically refresh their memories. This takes a sound learning ecosystem, a workscape.
Dan Pink thinks we should flip not only schooling but also publishing, the movie business, human resources, and office space. I agree. Business has changed. There’s hardly any business model left that couldn’t benefit from a flip. Break the processes into pieces and see if there’s not a better way to put them back together.
Mr. Cross: I am a fan of your writings and am advocate of your principles. However, I have a few thoughts about this trend towards relying on video as the point of “information leverage” in a flipped learning role. It isn’t as simple as giving students a video to watch and expect that they will be adequately prepared to participate in an interactive environment with an instructor or other students.
First, watching a video is inherently passive, no matter how charismatic the performer or narrator. Whether a segment can be repeated is of less importance than if the student is engaged purposefully with the subject matter. [note: "The Invisible Gorilla" http://youtu.be/IGQmdoK_ZfY ]. If instructors intend on using a one-way, asynchronous form of communication to provide foundation for social interaction, there must be certain elements surrounding the media:
1 – Students need guidance on what to look for in the media prior to engagement. Guidance can be along the lines of what *kinds* of things to look for or observe, such as “what approach does the narrator take?” or “which principles from your readings are being applied here?”. This helps build a less “noisy” epistemological position with the content.
2 – Students should be directed to document their engagement with the media in some form for future reference. Video, as a linear medium, unfolds in various ways – sometimes linear, sometimes not. It is critical for engagement events to be documented (notetaking, annotation, etc.) so that they may be used as cues to recall transient impressions.
3 – Instructors must interact with students with discussion questions that draw from students’ engagement events. These notes should be used to support a position, observation, or hypothesis (see: Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy for which levels of discussion would be appropriate for the level of instruction and student prior knowledge).
This proposal is based on the belief that assessing learning involves evidence of some kind. Watching a video does not inherently produce durable evidence, nor is it conventional practice to take notes on what is observed (unless you are Tweeting while watching Grey’s Anatomy! But still…). As instructors, it is critical that we codify expectations when engaging in traditionally “lean back” media. There are a lot of non-academic habits to overcome to foster learning with non-text media.
As part of my work in faculty PD, I have produced a short series of videos that introduce this proposal: http://youtu.be/AvuKcFWJWSc
- Steve Covello – Rich Media Specialist, Granite State College
Jay,
Now wonder you are also investigating this trend! I have been fascinated by the Khan Academy presentation at TED Talk http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html at the moment I have come aware of this concept.
And I do agree – PLEASE – do not let any industry misuse (occupy) this term for any business model focusing on just selling a product.
What it is: Looking at the ‘one-stream’ lecture at your leisure – even if your ‘lecture’ had only been produced for your cousins. And: Let us do the ‘homework’ – aka what the old craftsman master taught his apprentice to apply this know-how and his know-why to his practical work crafting (e.g. a table) – where the master is present and available for immediate feedback.
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Hay Jay,
I get concerned about some “words” in your thinkings about flip:
1 – “Millions of students are learning this way …” Does the school know it? Agree with it? (I am thinking in K12, and other schools than Stanford with its IA course. I think we still have few sucess samples.)
2 – ” nightmare about flipping learning ..” No doubt. It will become real (the enterprise is not ready for free thinking, my be when this generation of students get there at top level jobs …)
While I agree the concept of flipping is of importance to business to consider, I have a hard to accepting Khan Academy or Udacity as a model of flipping. They are alternative models of the structure of learning, but on its own Khan’s videos are at best a part of a flipped classroom model.
c.f. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/7996379/Daniel-Pinks-Think-Tank-Flip-thinking-the-new-buzz-word-sweeping-the-US.html
I cant see where Khan Academy on its own is a model of being flipped, in fact, it is only one side of the flip. And the Stanford courses are providing content and activity in a different mode, but again, what is the other side of the flip? I do not see how content delivered in video form is a flip. Help me see.
We believe the foundation of the flipped classroom, whether corporate or academic, is content that’s divisible, shareable, remixable and flexible. That’s what OpenSesame is trying to do – to enable companies to find the content they need easily and move on to spending their team’s time on consulting, developing problem-specific solutions and building the workscape.
Alan, I don’t think we disagree. After all, I wrote “In the classroom, they sort out what they’ve learned and do what used to be called homework.” In fact, the whole point of my post is that a successful flip takes more than slapping lectures online.
Breno, to my way of thinking, the learning is more important than whether the school knows or recognizes its source. We don’t penalize first graders who show up knowing the ABCs because they watched Sesame Street.
In college, when I was assigned a book to read, I’d often read reviews of the book from when it came out. This gave me insights I would not have come up with on my own. Did it show in my analysis? Probably. Did the school know where I’d come up with my ideas? No.
Also, I’m optimistic that economic Darwinism will favor the survival of organizations whose people think for themselves.
The missing piece: @alan – have a look at http://youtu.be/2H4RkudFzlc
So, I do agree that the Khan Academy on its own does not yet flip the classroom. But if teachers like Aaron will be stopping lecturing and supporting their trainees to ‘getting things done’ or to ‘working smarter’ with the knowledge they have acquired from a video, or any other source, I think that it is worthwhile looking at this model.
And here Katie Gimbar is explaining what she and her class get from flipping:
http://youtu.be/9aGuLuipTwg
She also offers other videos, answering questions like – ‘what, if they did not watch the videos they were supposed to?’
… or why do I create my own videos as opposed to ‘expert’s’ videos like Khan Academy etc. – http://youtu.be/jMfSLXluiSE
I think, worthwhile looking at …
Jay,
Thanks for the flippin’ blog! Here’s a quote from Alvin Tofflers “The Third Wave” to add to the conversation:
“Let’s have a little exercise. Walk me through this school you’d create. What do the classrooms look like? What are the class sizes? What are the hours?
It’s open 24 hours a day. Different kids arrive at different times. They don’t all come at the same time, like an army. They don’t just ring the bells at the same time. They’re different kids. They have different potentials. Now, in practice, we’re not going to be able to get down to the micro level with all of this, I grant you, but in fact, I would be running a twenty-four-hour school, I would have non-teachers working with teachers in that school, I would have the kids coming and going at different times that make sense for them.
The schools of today are essentially custodial: They’re taking care of kids in work hours that are essentially nine to five — when the whole society was assumed to work. Clearly, that’s changing in our society. So should the timing. We’re individualizing time; we’re personalizing time. We’re not having everyone arrive at the same time, leave at the same time. Why should kids arrive at the same time and leave at the same time?”
From http://knowledgestarblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/why-online-education-is-ready-for-disruption-now/
Co-incidence…? I’ve engaged in discussions during the course of the day regarding video presentations and just developed video content in conjunction with eLearning in a leading Retail Clothing company in South Africa and we’ve been exploring more effective and efficient ways of introducing training interventions to learners. This methodology provides greater reach to the learner from the training department. I’ll definately look into this as a means of engaging the learner and bridging the gap between the learner and L&D. Thanks again! Highly appreciated!! Follow @devaanparbhoo
Jay, I read your blog on Flipping Corporate Learning with great interest and I will share that I have already delivered this to major financing institution for retail stores.
The challenge they were faced with is that they needed more of their customers to sell financing and they needed information within two click of the mouse to get into the users/learners hands. We determine to offer up knowledge nuggets that would give the users just enough information to quickly make decisions enabling them to better serve their customers.
This information was delivered in video’s, podcasts, knowledge nuggets of traditional learning courses and PDF’s. We also gave the users the option of registering or not registering to encourage visitors to stay and get the information they need. The financial institution could also could “push” information out to their retail stores and offer to played on tablets or desktops. The second phase of this project will also include mobile phones.
All of this is being driven by a learning management system that has the appearance of a website. I met the clients needs, their customers needs and assisted them in closing more sale and deals in a greatly reduced time-frame.
Michael Kiffmeyer
Good article, and I like the concept of the flipped classroom learning process; we’re actually doing this in an engineering workplace setting although we hadn’t applied a “flipped” label to it.
That said, I continue to have concerns about labels. Like elearning, if there’s enough interest in the “brand”, everyone wants a piece and most don’t appreciate you still have to think through every application and make smart choices; one size rarely fits all. Other recent brands: virtual , 2.0, 3.0, and social . This is happening with flipped: a #swchat topic a few weeks back was “flipped leadership.” To me this is basically a different concept entirely–it’s leading from below, using influence, driving change without authority.
I actually thought of flipped learning as more similar to the leadership example: learning without formal authority—in other words informal learning. To me, flipping the classroom learning process is entirely different.
The key for me in this “FLIP” is simple.
Teachers spend less time on basic information delivery, and spend more time on key mentoring tasks, like helping contextualize information learners will experience (pre- or post- consumption: both are important), and evaluating progress. I think the point of evaluating progress is key. Right now, my daughter’s teacher spends a tremendous amount of time in class delivering basic info, then delivering and grading exercises, providing feedback (largely generalized because there isn’t a lot of capacity to truly understanding individual challenges)… it’s inefficient and most the effort is going into items that don’t address an individual’s learning challenge.
With flipping, it seems it is much more possible for the “info delivery” to not eat up a significant amount of time for a mentor (yes, there will always be some clarifications, summaries of key points, setup). It seems every individual can complete some activities and exercises, and the teacher can very quickly get a snapshot report of the most common pain points (for general instruction) as well as the individual struggles (for personalized mentoring). Then, the bulk of time can guide exactly how to mentor each student: determine what additional resources or exercises to provide, etc… and hopefully buy time for the most valuable aspects of the teaching role.
For me, that’s the flip:
Change the ratio of Time_infodelivery : Time_personalizedinstruction (actually working with the students rather than with the information).
Jay,
I think your post on flipping learning is quite interesting and is right on point for today’s learners. The key issue I see with today’s students is they don’t learn the same as we did when we were kids. We didn’t have XBOXs, PS3s, iPhones, and the Internet to compete for our attention. As a result, I don’t think it was that challenging to teach key concepts “back in the day”. All a teacher had to do was get up in front of the chalk board and go over our reading for that particular lesson. Try that today and you’re liable to get many glazed looks as if you were from another planet. Students today, both K-12 and adult learners, want and need to be challenged. But to challenge them you first have to get their attention. As you very correctly pointed out, flashing 30 PowerPoint slides at them simply won’t do.
As I was starting my undergrad degree in 1999, in residence at first anyway, it was the same as its always been, read a chapter or two and come to class prepared to discuss what your ready. Now, with the right kind of professor this wasn’t all that bad, but it did get monotonous. Once I was stationed elsewhere (in 2002), I was forced to go online to finish my degree. Wow, what a different experience that was! Every single class was the same. Read the book, post on the discussion board, complete a three to five page paper for the week, and answer posts on the discussion board. It seemed like the university was making up for a lack of actual class time by making students write papers and post in a chat room. That isn’t learning, its writing!
Fast forward ten years and I think at least some schools are starting to get the message. I am getting an MS in IDT at Walden University and they mix blogs, hardback books, electronic articles and papers, and chat rooms to create their own form of flipping learning. While it is still online learning, it at least mixes teaching methods in order to help keep the student engaged, and inevitably there is something that each student will enjoy (I enjoy the videos the most) and surely some facets they will not enjoy, like good old fashioned reading. Nevertheless, using a variety of teaching methods and thinking outside of the box as you develop courses and lessons is, IMHO, the key message of your post.
I recently posted a video of a professor (Harvard University Professor Eric Mazur) who is taking a similar approach as he finds new ways to engage his students and to not only help them learn, but also to ensure they comprehend the material. If you have a moment, please take a look at his approach; I’m sure you’ll find it most interesting (http://youtu.be/lBYrKPoVFwg).
Terry
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I think flipping learning is an excellent idea. I often have used this technique for my high school students, but I did not call it flipping. This is very useful for online schools as well.
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