Beware of the trend toward "flipped" classroom instruction

Parents Forum
1

<p>Many colleges are promoting the concept of the "flipped" classroom where faculty record lectures for students to watch outside of class and class time is spent doing other things such as homework. Faculty like it because it reduces their lecturing workload to almost nothing and students like it because they don't have to listen to lectures.</p>

<p>Flip</a> teaching - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>

<p>I am skeptical. </p>

<p>How much will students learn?
Does it increase or decrease faculty contact?
How is the classroom time spent?
Are colleges admitting that professors are not necessary? Why not create one lecture for all colleges to use for all students in the country? Do you need professors to run what is essentially a high school study hall?
Would you pay $100-200K for this kind of instruction?
Are colleges caving in to the fact that the college student of today has the attention span of a gnat?</p>

<p>When you visit, ask whether the college supports "flipped" instruction.</p>

2

<p>I haven’t heard of any colleges who follow this approach; can you list some of them? I have heard of this concept for elementary and high schools and used properly, they seem like a very good idea in grades 1 - 12.</p>

<p>And no, I certainly wouldn’t pay $100-$200k for a university who takes this approach. I just haven’t seen any who do (yet).</p>

3

<p>My D had one flipped class in HS and I am in favor of it. The point of the recorded lectures or lessons is not to replace teaching time, but to enhance it. The student is able to re-watch any concepts that didn’t quite sink in the first time through or to take better notes than s/he could on the fly, and the classroom time is then spent on discussion of the topic, application of the topic, answering questions and/or personal assistance with a related assignment.</p>

<p>I am a proponent of it and wish my D had more classes like this in HS, especially in math. She just completed her orientation and schedule for next year, and I see one of her classes has an online component as well as a classroom component. I hope this means it will be a flipped class.</p>

4

<p>Another “hot” education idea that will be gone in a few years. They come and go and it always come back to the way it has been for 1000’s of years.</p>

5

<p>I don’t think colleges have entirely “flipped” (except figuratively) but they are supporting individual faculty who are “flipping”.</p>

<p>University of Maryland
Stanford</p>

<p>[Is</a> the modified Moore method an instance of the flipped classroom? - Casting Out Nines - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/tag/flipped-classroom/]Is”>http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/tag/flipped-classroom/)
[Debating</a> the ‘Flipped Classroom’ at Stanford - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/debating-the-flipped-classroom-at-stanford/34811]Debating”>Wired Campus: Debating the ‘Flipped Classroom’ at Stanford)</p>

6

<p>My D had a supposedly flipped class in chemistry this year. It was such a bad experience that I pulled her from the class. The online lectures were confusing and questions about them in class were strongly discouraged. When a question was answered, the explanation was exactly as in the video.</p>

<p>I think Ds bad experience was more due to the teacher than the format.</p>

7

<p>I like the concept IF the viewing of the lecture is required, AND if the time in the classroom is interactive and pertinent to the lectures.</p>

8

<p>I have not heard of any colleges using this method, though I know of many where the lectures are recorded, and made available online following class. This is great for students who cannot attend a particular lecture, or who felt the “got it” during lecture, but find themselves not getting it when they start working on the homework.</p>

<p>I have heard of elementary and high schools taking it the next step, and assigning the lectures as homework, and doing problem sets in class. For certain classes it makes sense, because the teachers are then spending time with the students working the problem sets, making sure they understand them. If the students are expected to spend an hour listening to a lecture, and an hour working on problems, it makes a certain amount of sense for the teacher to be available while they’re doing problems - when they’re far more likely to have questions, and need feedback - than during a lecture that can be recorded. It’s not that different from the model that has worked for ages in many math and science departments, where the professor was your lecturer, but you also had lab and recitation sessions. Flipped classes, are like recitations, where someone is available to answer your questions as you try to complete the work yourself.</p>

<p>As to the OP’s questions:</p>

<p>the students learn quite a bit, because they can listen to the lecture on their own schedule (maybe they’re most alert at 2am, when the lecturer is fast asleep), and as frequently as they want. Class notes are great, but sometimes you miss something the first time.</p>

<p>It may not increase faculty contact in the sense of amount of time the instructor is available, but he or she is using that contact time more effectively. Classes become more of a two-way interaction. Quality of contact is far more important that quantity, and in a flipped class, interaction is encouraged. If you ever sat in a large lecture hall, you know that student questions are often frowned upon.</p>

<p>No, they’re not admitting anything of the sort. This frees up the professor’s time to work directly with students. I suppose there could be one single bank of lectures, though each college teachers certain classes differently. Maybe eventually they will move to a model where a book is published with lectures to go along with it, but you would still need the recitation portion of the class.</p>

<p>Most of the HS study halls I recall, or my kids have had did not include a teacher a working with the students on the homework - they had a teacher at the front of the class to manage the noise level, not much more. </p>

<p>Would I spend $200,000 on such instruction? Since it’s not that different than what is offered at a small LAC - classes which are driven by discussion, not lectures - I don’t see a problem with it. If done well, this model has great potential.</p>

9

<p>@CTScoutmom: “This is great for students who cannot attend a particular lecture, or who felt the “got it” during lecture, but find themselves not getting it when they start working on the homework.”</p>

<p>Exactly. Nothing worse than thinking you got the concept during class, then “learning” it all wrong by applying it all wrong on the homework, especially math. Trying to unlearn and re-learn when the rest of the class has moved on is difficult. At least when the written assignment is being done in the presence of the teacher and the teacher is available to clarify or answer questions, the learning wrong part can be avoided in the first place.</p>

10

<p>I like it. It would be fantastic for those with certain types of LDs that have a hard time taking notes quickly. This is part of the reason I take online classes when possible. I have hearing issues and sometimes miss part of the lectures. With this method, I can just go back and rewatch anything I missed. </p>

<p>It would leave more time for discussions. Most of my classes in college were discussion-based classes so I’m generally in favor of classes that require more collaboration.</p>

11

<p>Almost all of the CS classes at my undergrad school were recorded and available online to students. Because of this, attendance was almost non-existent. However, recitation sessions were heavily attended because people had watched the lectures and were then able to ask reasonable questions about the parts of the material they didn’t understand.</p>

<p>I had a chemistry class in college where the professor would record a lecture if he was going to be out of town. They were typically his best lectures since what he was writing was very easily seen, you could rewind if you missed something, and parts of the lecture could be rewatched when actually doing the homework.</p>

<p>Personally, as someone that’s been a TA for a ton of different classes, both with good lecturers and bad, I like the idea of a flipped classroom. That tends to be what most recitations are. Students see a lecture that they may or may not follow all of, then they get to have a session where they can ask questions and try to get help on parts of homework they can’t quite make the connection on.</p>

<p>A great lecture is invaluable, and if it happens to come from a video, so be it. Allow the class time to be for exploring deeper ideas and really getting at the difficult concepts.</p>

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<p>The link doesn’t seem as worried as OP does.</p>

13

<p>I have taken a number of distance ed courses that had essentially this format. All of the lectures were recorded, and we received them later by mail. I could run them on “fast” if I wanted to which would cut down the time I was stuck in front of the TV, I could stop, rewind (yup, a bunch were on videotape), watch again and again. The transition to CD was a bit bumpy, but all of us mastered that as well. I understand that now they are streaming but can be viewed as many times as needed. All homework was submitted through Blackboard where we could “chat” asynchronously with our classmates scattered all around the world, or ask the lead course instructor and teaching assistant for clarification. What I missed most with the format was the live interaction with classmates and instructor, not live lectures.</p>

14

<p>I had a couple of highschool math classes like this. They were terrible because the teachers discouraged questions during class.</p>

15

<p>Innkeeper, so what exactly did you do in class? And was the teacher the actual lecturer?</p>

16

<p>I listen to recorded lectures from the Teaching Company all the time. Many of them are just as good as, or better than, lectures I heard in college. There are some great ones online, as well. I do have to wonder whether this will eventually change how education is delivered. Professors don’t rewrite the textbook every year–why should they rewrite and redeliver the lectures every year?</p>

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<p>I think I would have liked that model as a student. Doing a lot of online courses for my master’s degree now, I really like the professors that actually record a lecture instead of just giving us a lecture to read. Of course, we don’t get that classroom time with them, but I would really like it if we did. It would be great to have time to ask follow up questions about parts we may not have understood. I can see it being especially helpful with math, science, and computer science courses. Sometimes, with digital forensics, you can get stuck on a case study investigation and can’t figure out what you’re doing wrong. It would be great to have a professor there to help out when that happens.</p>

18

<p>All I can say as a teacher is if we were told we had to do this I would quit adjuncting. At least when I lecture I don’t have to watch it myself. The idea of seeing myself on video is appalling to me. Given the lack of effort expended by many of my students as it is, I can’t imagine that many of them would even watch the videos anyways.</p>

19

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<p>I had a technical writing class where the professor recorded our presentations and required us to go back and rewatch our presentation multiple times. I’m someone that’s comfortable speaking in front of people, yet rewatching my presentation felt so embarrassing because I found so many problems in what I was doing. One of the best pointed out by the professor was if you watched the video at ~5x speed you could see how I’d very, very slowly rock from my right foot to my left and then back, so I could advance to the next slide.</p>

20

<p>In the sciences and mathematics, this form of instruction may work well for students who share questions or issues with the rest of the class. For the brighter students in a class, I think the class largely becomes enforced time-wasting, much like many high school classes. </p>

<p>If there are lectures in a science/math course, the students are not supposed to be listening to them passively. I recognize that some students are just listening and recording, and not able to think about the content at the same time.</p>

<p>I have actually tried a modified form of class-flipping, because there is a lot of administrative pressure for it on my campus. Sometimes it has worked really well. Usually, this involves in-class experiments, where one can run real-time data analysis, and have data issues for the students to look at outside of class, also. If class time is devoted to answering student questions or presenting problems to illustrate the topics, it helps enormously if the class is fairly homogeneous, in terms of extent of mastery of the material. Otherwise, one student is giving a long explanatory answer while other students are still trying to figure out what the question means.</p>