I have just returned from another great conference in Kelowna. It wasn’t just about flipped classrooms, but rather about making learning meaningful. Many of my preliminary research findings were prevalent. Flipping is not about making videos. It’s about putting the ownership of learning onto the learner. However, as I am finding in my own research, learners should not be given complete freedom of learning because then they will not have any motivation to be engaged. They need to be given some structure in order to capture their attention and make them want to put the effort into learning. this was evident in Ramsey Mussallam’s Keynote at the conference as well as his TED talk:

At Canflip13, Ramsey conducted a session on inquiry based learning with technology. I observed him using quite a bit of classroom structure. As I have discovered in my own research, such procedural and organizational structure can be provided as long as it is supported in an autonomous way. However, the key is to provide students with cognitive autonomy. This means that students should be given opportunities to create meaning in their own ways. I believe that this is the key to any good teaching model, and the flipped classroom in particular allows for this. Nonetheless, this is still a difficult feat to achieve. How do we catch our learners attention, and even further, how do we KEEP this attention? I find that it is relatively easy to hook students into an idea, but it seems as though too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing because students get used to our ‘hooks’ and become immune to their stimulative powers.  I guess what I mean is that it is a challenge for any teacher to keep their course interesting the whole way through. The key to this is changing things up and bringing in elements of surprise. When people are surprised by something, they engage in it. I think we don’t just need to spark student learning, but we need to find ways to continue building interest. In his keynote, Ramsey brought attention to the lens of Bloom’s Taxonomy. We need to find ways to lead students to higher order thinking. Flipping a classroom needs to have this very purpose in mind, and just making videos does not cut it. We need to utilize the extra time in an engaging manner. That is the goal.

I do not claim to have the answer to this goal, but it is what I strive for.

I had a great time at ETUG Spring 2013! Check out this link to find the ETUG session description and slides.

This was my first ETUG experience, and I must say I was blown away. All the ETUG members were fascinating. I had a great time chatting with several ETUG members about various topics in teaching and learning. Most importantly, I found that the ETUG community is deeply interested in engaging learners. This was evident by all the great ideas the members at my session came up with when I asked them to brainstorm what we SHOULD be doing with our in-class time if we didn’t have to worry about ‘covering’ the curriculum:

·         Ask for ideas from students on previous topics
·         Open conversation
·         Teaching each other
·         Brainstorming
·         Creativity
·         Re-visioning our practice
·         Bring in experts virtually or in person to discuss our subject area
·         Shared activities
·         Instructor listening
·         Solve a really cool problem (case study type) together
·         Application of concepts
·         Peer feedback
·         Dialogue and interaction with peers and facilitator
·         Encourage students to learn from each other
·         Case studies
·         Set up an environment for the learners to teach each other and myself
·         More work with real data – application of theory
·         Facilitated discussion
·         User-generated content
·         Interest sharing
·         Discussions between peers (peer feedback)
·         Create a discussion
·         Problem-solving
·         Applying concepts
·         Share more problem solutions
·         Work on student generated problems/projects
·         Real world applications
·         Students having time to explore
·         Encourage learning from each other and not just from the instructor/text
·         Practice/play with ideas
·         Explore
·         Apply the ideas in practical ways
·         Freedom to explore
·         Answering real questions students have about the subject matter
·         Practice use of specific tools
·         Design course delivery with focus on outcomes
·         Engaging activities group work
·         Practice
·         Make it a group session
·         Ask students what they want to know

This two-minute brainstorming session was very productive. It was done in a way that I hadn’t ever tried before – getting members to write their ideas down on little 3 by 3 inch pieces of paper and passing them around continuously so that others could see their peers’ ideas! This way, when I asked members to call out some of the ideas they liked, they could use either someone else’s idea (which would have honored the writer of the idea) or they could have used their idea. I’ll be sure to try this method again! The list that was generated as shown above is full of student-centered teaching approaches.

I’d like to repeat a quote I read out loud during my session:
“Why is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in and learning by passive absorption, are universally condemned, that they are still so entrenched in practice?” – John Dewey,1926

The main point of my session was to drive home the conception of actually using class time for student-centered teaching by removing passive lecture and placing it in an online environment where it is readily accessible out of class time.

Before I was even half way through my presentation, members couldn’t hold back asking questions. There were so many great questions being asked. I know there will be a live audio recording of the session that will be posted on the ETUG website in the near future. However, if you are reading this, and you have questions about the flipped classroom and how it works, please do not hesitate to comment and ask. I do not claim to be an expert, but I am willing to share what I have done and what I have found to be both successful and not-so-successful.