Flipped Out !!

[mathking]

I am doing this in for my classes this year. (I did it some last year as an experiment, and this year I am trying to do a more detailed analysis of its effectiveness.) And have a colleague who has been doing it for a while. It works, sort of. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea and it has real advantages, but as an every day thing I don't think it works as well as some of its proponents believe.

Most of the problems have already been mentioned here. When kids don't watch the lessons in the evening, they aren't ready to do work in class. I have found that if I keep the videos to 10-12 minutes or less the kids will watch them. Sometimes this means breaking my 40 minute lecture into 2 or 3 pieces. I have also found that some subjects are just too complicated to be explained effectively in a video. For those I will try to lay the groundwork in a short video and then do the main lecture in class. This is particularly true for topics that really require discussion in order to be effectively learned. I have found that for math and CS classes "flipping the classroom" some of the time is effective and gives me more time to work with students while they are working, rather than just listening to me talk.

On a related note, one thing a lot of my colleagues (and I) are doing is recording (in some fashion or other) our lectures. Whether this is a digital recording or a PDF of all of the work done on the smart board, we save it each day and post it to our web pages. This gives students "back up" for their notes. They often remark that seeing the sample problems in class worked out again (often with rewind involved) at their own pace is helpful.

[mathking]

Originally Posted by Joe G.

This sounds quite a bit like something I'm trying to put together for my junior project at WPI. Details, and approval, are yet to be determined, but stay tuned...

Another enhancement for video lectures: cross-linking. When given a video lecture, you can't ask it for clarification; you can only play it again and again, and hope it sinks in. But what if there was some way to tell the video "Can you tell me more about that?" or "What does that word mean?", which would link to another video that explains it! I imagine the ideal video-lecture system to resemble a web, rather than a linear set of videos, where students can move around the web in the pace and direction they want, learning what they need to know.

Several teachers I know who try to flip the classroom use a Wiki or a Moodle page to accomplish this webbing. It is particularly useful if you tag the video files.

[pfreivald]

I implement a low-tech version of this in some of my classes based on the "West Point Model". Instead of online videos, it uses an archaic and outmoded technology from the Dark Ages known as "books".

Kids read and take notes on the topic of study (which includes sample problems). Class time is for questions from them on what they read, and problem sets wherein they can get help.

I'd love to do the actual West Point Model, but could never get away with it...