Flipping a Calculus Course - and self directed learning?

I have posted in this blog a couple times on the "flipped classroom" teaching strategy (check the categories on the right).  In this entry I want to share a series of posts in which a mathematics lecturer at the Grand Valley State University in Michigan, Robert Talbert, chronicles his experiences with "flipping" a calculus course.  In the process he illustrates the potential of the flipped approach for developing self-regulating students, an important goal in the preparation of 21st century graduates.

The following post entitled The inverted calculus course and self-regulated learning is a good place to start - http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2014/03/03/the-inverted-calculus-course-and-self-regulated-learning/ .  You can  use the “previous”  and “next”  links at the top of the post to see his earlier and later posts if it gets interesting.  He is writing about his experience “flipping” a calculus course, but the concepts introduced and the lessons learned are  relevant to most disciplines.  I particularly like the post on Creating Learning Objectives, flipped classroom style which really gets you thinking about how you develop and sequence learning outcomes http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2014/03/05/creating-learning-objenctives-flipped-classroom-style/ .   The posts are certainly worth a read.  

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Flipping the Foreign Language Classroom

Image source:http://webhost.bridgew.edu/lwerner/

 Foreign language faculty looking for ways to move beyond traditional approaches to teaching will find this article from the November 2013 issue of The Language Educator, a publication from The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) quite thought-provoking.

The article entitled A New Approach to Language Instruction — Flipping the Classroom shares the strategies and experiences of teachers at both university and high school level, who are using technology to improve the teaching of foreign languages, at the same time developing self-regulated learning skills of students.  Their model is the Flipped Classroom on which we have blogged before (see Would Flipping the Classroom Work for Your Course? ).

“Keep in mind that flipping the classroom

is not the delivery of a lecture on video.

A video of a boring lecture is a boring

video that doesn’t enhance the learning experience."

The article explains the flipped classroom approach, its growing popularity in high school and university classrooms and pros and cons of adoption in foreign language teaching.  Sharing the results of research and anecdotal reports from faculty,  it highlights issues and strategies such as "how to flip", "does flipping work", technical and pedagogical considerations, the importance of preparing students, and strategies for getting students involved.

Take a look and let know what you think.  Or share your own "flipping" experience!

Optimal Video Length for Student Engagement

For those persons using or considering using online video lectures in their courses, as occurs for example in "flipped classroom" or other models of blended learning,  you may be interested in this post (https://www.edx.org/blog/optimal-video-length-student/1239)  in which Philip Guo, an assistant professor of Computer Science at the University of Rochester whose main research interests are in human-computer interaction and online education, shares preliminary results about video usage in blended or online courses.  The post is based on findings published in a Wall Street Journal article, An Early Report Card on Massive Open Online Courses, obtained from initial analyses of a few math and science courses on the edX system.  The findings seem to support what is currently recommended as best practice for use of instructional video.

Guo reports that the data suggest "The optimal video length is 6 minutes or shorter -- students watched most of the way through these short videos. In fact, the average engagement time of any video maxes out at 6 minutes, regardless of its length. And engagement times decrease as videos lengthen: For instance, on average students spent around 3 minutes on videos that are longer than 12 minutes, which means that they engaged with less than a quarter of the content. Finally, certificate-earning students engaged more with videos, presumably because they had greater motivation to learn the material."

Guo ends with a "take-home message for instructors" using or thinking about using videos in their classes, as occurs for example in "flipped classroom" approaches or other models of blended learning.  The message is that in order to maximize student engagement, video lectures should be broken up into small, bite-sized pieces.

Would "Flipping the Classroom" Work for Your Course?

 "Andrew P. Martin loves it when his lectures break out in chaos."  The "chaos" usually results from his implementation of the teaching strategy know as "flipping", being implemented in a number of college classrooms, particularly in North America.  As the term implies, "flipping" involves the inversion of what one would expect  to happen in the traditional college lecture. Activities that would normally be done as "homework" are done in class, and much of what would traditionally be covered in the lecture is done by students outside of the classroom, often supported by technology.  "Flipping ... takes many forms, including interactive engagement, just-in-time teaching (in which students respond to Web-based questions before class, and the professor uses this feedback to inform his or her teaching), and peer instruction."  Some (both instructors and students) love it, some hate it, but apparently, a growing body of research, is showing that the method results in "more learning."

Read the full article which appeared recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education following a Teaching and Learning Conference at Harvard University where "flipping" was a regular buzzword." http://chronicle.com/article/How-Flipping-the-Classroom/130857/.  After you read the article, share your thought.  Would/could  "flipping" result in "more learning" in your course?  Would it be feasible? Why ever not????