To Flip or Not To Flip - Part 1

   

Image from 123rf

     Let's face it. People either love the flipped classroom or they hate it. I'm right there with you. I was there trying out flipped right from the beginning.  I went to all the sessions about it at EdCamps all over Texas.  I learned all the "dos and don'ts" of how to do flipped such as make sure to quiz students over their flipped videos, punish those who don't watch, do activities in class, etc.  Well, some things worked for me and some didn't and some I just flat out didn't agree with.  Does this mean that I decided to throw the whole strategy out?  No!  I tried it out, some things worked and some things didn't,  but I kept at it and tweaked as I went.  There's no flipped classroom police that will arrest you if you don't follow all the "rules of flipped classroom."  So, I did what worked for me.
     You might be wondering why I'm even bringing up the flipped classroom in the first place.  Well, flipped classroom is one of the models in blended learning and it can be a really great place to dive in to blended learning if you are just starting out; however, I've seen it done well and it gave students tons of flexibility and really allowed for personalized learning, and I've also seen it done poorly where there is no real benefit to the classroom.  So, let's talk a little bit about how we can make flipped meaningful and beneficial to you and your students.
     Let's take a look at flipped learning through the blended learning lens.  Using the blended learning graphic, we'll start out by looking at flexibility in time.  The idea of flipped learning is that the teacher assigns a video to the students to watch at home before returning to class the next day.  The video replaces typical lecture and the students are ready to jump right into activities where they can apply what they learned in the video.  This seems like sort of a no-brainer when it comes to flexibility in time, right?  Students can watch the video anytime they want after school, at night, or in the morning before school, so what's the problem?  The biggest complaint that I hear about this set-up from teachers is what happens if my kids don't watch the video?  What if they don't have internet access at home?  Instead of letting these things become a problem that prevents you from trying out this model, let's think about how we can adapt to make this a win-win for everyone.  Here's my argument.  Flipped videos are supposed to be a maximum of 3-5 minutes long.  We are not talking about hour long lecture videos.  What if a student couldn't watch the video at home and they come to class?  Why can't they just pick up a device and watch the video for 3 minutes?  What's that you say?  We can't allow students to do this.  Then everyone will do this.  Now, let me ask you this?  Why is it so bad to give them the freedom to watch the video at home or in class?  Is it going to completely ruin your class if some students take 3 minutes of class time to watch the video?  I dare say no.  I gave students this freedom and it became more like on-demand learning.  Some students watched at home, some watched at the beginning of class and some watched at a later point in class when they needed the information.  This became a wonderful set up that allowed students to access help and instruction when they needed it.  They could watch a video more than once or even stop and start while they are working alongside the video.  The best part for me as the teacher was that I was now freed up to help students who needed extra help either individually or in small groups.  The years that I did this in my classroom were probably my favorite and I would say more students learned more that year than students in other years.

Image from Meme Generator

     Now that we've got the time issue worked out, let's take a look at place.  Offering students some sort of flipped experience, which by the way doesn't have to only be a video, gives students 24/7 access to learning.  No longer is the learning confined to the classroom on a specific day at a specific time and if you miss it, then tough luck.  Let's hope you never get sick!  Now, students that are sick can still keep up with the lessons in class and you don't get bombarded with questions at the beginning of class such as did we do anything yesterday?  Think about all the reasons students miss class - vacations, school sponsored activities, ISS, etc.  Now if kids miss your class for any reason, they have the flipped experience to guide them in their learning rather than depending on you, the teacher.
     Finally let's take a look at pace.  Thinking back to every class I ever had, (and there were a lot of them) I had students that needed me to go faster in my teaching, those that needed me to go slower and those that liked my pace the way it was.  I'm sure this is true for every teacher in America.  If I'm standing in front of the classroom teaching a lesson to the whole group, there is only one of me.  I can only go at one pace so I'm only meeting the needs of about 1/3 of my students.  That means the other 2/3 of my students are either bored or lost and confused.  By using the flipped classroom model, you can provide students with scaffolded lessons that they can access on their own when they need it.  What if we are talking about prepositional phrases, but I'm confused because I don't remember what a preposition is.  Now as a student, I can return back to a previous video or other learning experience about prepositions to refresh my memory, then I can return back to the current lesson.  While there is usually only 1 teacher in a classroom, this becomes a problem if you are teaching everything whole group.  But, if you are using the flipped model, students have many resources to help them learn what they need, essentially multiplying the teacher and also freeing that same teacher up to work with individuals that really need some one-on-one instruction and guidance to clear up confusion or further challenge them.
     So far we've looked at 3 of the 5 components of blended learning in this blog post.  Check back in next week when we look at flipped classroom can add flexibility to path as well as how we can continue to collect and use data to guide learning.