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

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).

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.