Does anyone here have a child in a flipped classroom? I'm dubious about this model. There doesn't seem to be any research assessing its effectiveness (presumably because it's so new). But it seems to be catching on, based on what I found with a simple google search for the term. Is this just another fad? I wonder.

One of my neighbors told me that her child had just completed a year of geometry in a flipped classroom, and that a kid who had always loved math and done well in it had come to hate it. But this is only one anecdote and so I'm asking this question here as a way of getting more anecdotes.

You could say there are two things that should be happening in classrooms (and have been happening in classrooms for a long time), e.g. "lectures" and "tutorials". "Flipping" sounds like someone's been doing 100% of one of the two things, and decides that they should instead do 100% of the other. In other words, go from unbalanced one way to unbalanced the other. Why not have a balance?

The basic idea seems to be that the lecture becomes homework, and the exercises are done in class. Conceptually, it seems to make a lot of sense, as most of the good-quality questions are generated when putting the ideas into practice. It means a qualified teacher is there to respond to "homework" questions, which relieves the responsibility from parents, who are often not qualified at all.

I wouldn't read too much into a mathy kid who hates geometry based on a particular delivery mechanism, because I knew a lot of kids who loved math but hated geometry for no better reason than because it was geometry.

Well, like I said, it was an anecdote and I seek more information here. I like 22B's observation about the need for balance, though.

The primary reasons for my suspicion about the effectiveness of this method are that:

1. Students can't raise their hands during a video lecture and say, "Wait, I didn't get that." Pressing the rewind button will not always work in this situation.

and

2. People seem to be jumping into this method without any solid evidence for its effectiveness.

I'm similarly skeptical of the effectiveness of online learning for the same reasons (especially #1). My son has done a year of online courses and almost all of them have required significant help from the scientist and engineer in the family. I'm not sure how kids who aren't surrounded by highly educated people can truly get a lot out of online courses as they're currently modeled (i.e. very little live instructor time).

If anyone knows of a decent research study, I'd love to see it. I just haven't found one in my admittedly quick searches.

Some flipped classrooms expect students to watch Khan Academy videos at home. I've read that the genesis of Khan Academy is that Salman Khan used to tutor nephews and nieces over the phone, created videos to supplement his phone lessons, and found that his nephews preferred the videos because they could rewind them.

Is a "flipped classroom" really a novel concept? In high school English classes, we discussed books we were expected to read at home. This also happens on college humanities seminars. Of course, the problem with this method is that students often fail to do their reading. A justification for the lecture format is that it is the only way to ensure that recalcitrant students are exposed to the material.

But they can ask those questions the next day in class.


You can't gather that evidence without putting it into practice somewhere, though.

My primary concerns would be:

1) This method, widely deployed, would eat up all the students' time outside of school. It also creates inefficiencies in the use of school time, because a student who gets it from the previous night's lecture can complete the assignment in 15 minutes, but it still stuck in class for the full 50 minutes.

2) Failure to view the lectures outside of school would be a widespread problem, leaving teachers to re-teach the material to those who skipped, and short-changing the students who didn't.

I agree, but this is what evidence-based approaches address. People accept that, overall, evidence-based medicine is the best system we have for treating patients. This is why Mr. Joe can't sell a special elixir that cures cancer, eczema, and old age until he proves that his elixir works as advertised.

IMO, the education field would benefit from adopting this approach. There are too many fads that catch on, burn brightly for a while, and then die when the research finally shows that they don't work. Whole-language reading is one particularly egregious example of this problem.

I agree with your two lower points, though.

I agree with both points Dude mentioned.

What stands out to me, is that the brighter / faster / gifted kids instead of getting the concept quickly in the classroom and having their afternoons / evenings free to explore other areas will be stuck watching lessons at home and then bored out of their minds in class.

Here is a link to a discussion of a 2011 NYT article on flipped classrooms using Khan Academy

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/117553/Khan_Academy_NYT_article.html .

Students were able to work on different topics at the same time.

I agree, Val.

I'm very suspicious of "Flipped Classroom" zealotry.

That is how I see much of the hype here-- it's related somehow to the latest buzz over MOOC.. blah-blah-blah, efficiency, blah-blah-blah... online-learning... empowerment... blah-blah-blah...

I've become increasingly cynical about this sort of thing, quite honestly. I think that administrators will pretty much pick up anything that is new and shiny. Even if it isn't, if you slap a patent medicine LABEL on something old and none-too-spiffy, that is sometimes enough. Administrators are like crows or raccoons, with an eye for anything shiny that might improve their status. :sigh:

Didn't we already TRY this in the 1970's with recorded video? Wasn't THAT going to cause a complete "revolution" in teaching and learning?? Oh, right. This is different. This is "disruptive technology." Sure.

It's alternative format textbooks. For visual learners, frankly, it is a DISASTER when 'flipped' classrooms replace written texts with video snippets-- and they do.

More cynically, I think that the actual impetus for this shift is that MOST students fail to do assigned reading and always have. The stupid part is thinking that educators can actually "fix" this problem from their end in the first place. They can't. But they've looked at the problem and concluded that students are "not sufficiently engaged" by print textbooks... "lack the attention span" for 'dry' presentations... Therefore, we need to solve this problem by making educational presentations compete with Funny YouTube Cat videos, or The People of WalMart. I'm personally more than a little appalled by that turn of events, as I see this as capitulating to completely anti-intellectual forces... and to be doing it in EDUCATION of all things is just so-- so-- well, it's profoundly wrong.

I also have to agree with Bostonian and others who point out that never have "good" learning environments been passive in the first place. They have always been about having students engaged in active cognitive work IN classrooms-- preferably with adequate preparation prior to class via assigned reading and homework.



My daughter has been ruined for mathematics by this incredibly wrong-headed approach, and I really very firmly believe this. She simply does not learn much from canned recordings.


Yes, well... as someone who has been living this way (via online educational programming) for seven years;

there is a BIG problem with that method for gifted learners. It prevents them from learning at an appropriate rate. I don't know if anyone else has experienced this first-hand, but this is why I really urge some caution with any online provider with HG kids. Sure, it's "self-paced" but not really if you're not a total autodidact, because you spend a lot of time viewing TINY little chunks of new material and-- waiting for answers to your questions. Sometimes waiting 24 hours for the answer to a five MINUTE question. Very much of that tends to cause shut-down. It's just too energy intensive to be worth the trouble, frankly.

Besides, this is different from a textbook HOW, exactly? Oh-- right. The textbook is actually superior in this regard because you can flip to the table of contents, the glossary, or the index in search of clarification, in a way that is not possible with a video recording.

It's not that I'm against prerecorded video lectures. I'm not. I think that they are a great supplement for students that need a slower pace, or for those that are auditory in preferred learning style. But I do NOT think that they can or should take the place of live instruction, or of textbooks.

It's still not clear why this isn't possible WITHOUT the 'new/shiny' method, though.

NONE of what we know to be true from research about learning bears out the notion that any of the 'new/disruptive' technology is really being leveraged to do anything... well, novel. Not really.

I'm pretty sure this video learning method would be a complete disaster for me. My husband always laughs at me because I can't remember anything and I mean ANYTHING from any movies we've seen. He will remember all the details for the next 10 years and I don't know the story or even the fact I have seen the movie before! BUT if he gives me the name of the movie, I'm sure I'll pull out all kinds of details about it from my brain like the cast, storyline, background production details and the country the movie was shot at solely because I have READ about it somewhere. I can read textbooks, I can read online texts, but play a video or audio for me and I'll be zoned out before you count to 3! lol

No first hand knwowledge here... At first, I was thinking wow that sounds interesting. Might work. Sorta sounds like college.

But then I realized it only looks nice on paper, and it flies in the face of the very skills that define a good or great teacher.

A great teacher is a storyteller of knowledge. A storyteller is different than an author in that they have an immediate performative task. They are aware of their audience and they energize their audience, dynamically change their content, etc. The storyteller also learns from their audience as to what is effective, interesting, difficult, and becomes better at their craft.

Val there is no good research on flipped classrooms that I'm aware of. That doesn't mean research isn't underway; I'm sure it is. However, research take time to develop (acquiring funding, conducting the research, interpreting the results, the peer review and publication process, the public vetting of studies once they appear in print). The process takes much longer, unfortunately, than fads take to spread across classrooms.

I agree with 22B. A mixed approach is by far the best, albeit this is anecdotal evidence based on my own experiences as a teacher of writing, literature, and women's studies and as a parent whose child's school has double periods of math and language arts where formal instruction (lecture) and workshop (independent and group work with peer and teacher support) are a part of every class session.

That's the point, though-- good teachers have ALWAYS used a moderate/combined approach, in every discipline that I'm familiar with.

There is a give-and-take, a sort of dance between instructor and students and material-- and it's unique and ephemeral. Recordings do not-- and cannot-- capture it, no matter how gifted the instructor him/herself might be. Because it's "flat" without the student interaction.

I'm reminded of the poignant editorial from some months past-- in which the author explains that even in a "lecture" format, a live instructional space is very much a dynamic exchange. It moved me to tears-- because I am so frustrated that we would undervalue something so precious.


Would one GIVE UP live theater as "inefficient" relative to television or film? It's fundamentally a different experience, right? Actors certainly say that there is no comparison, and as a theater supporter, so would I. No two performances are ever identical-- not even in the best theaters in the world-- and that is where the magic happens.

Why do fans still clamor to go to LIVE sporting events? They could watch it later on their TiVo, but many people would say that is an anemic substitute for the "real" experience.

WHY?


http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jun_10/article05.htm

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/50929/1/Karnad_Student_use_recorded_2013_author.pdf


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1495235/

http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet28/williams.html

http://www.iamse.org/artman/publish/printer_406.shtml

Please note that most of the research into whether or not recorded instructional modules are "effective" is based on research in post-secondary settings.

Interestingly, students THINK that the recorded snippets/lectures are more effective and efficient, but the data does NOT bear that out in most instances. It works okay for memorization-based material. But little else.

The problem with canned instruction isn't easily resolved, and it's fundamental among students who are not autodidacts, and there fore require, you know-- instruction:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-reality/2012/07/22/gJQAuw4J3W_blog.html While I don't agree with everything in that article, it's got some interesting points. Fundamental among them is that while YouTube and Khan, etc. have made viewing instructional content EASIER for students...

that on-demand "instruction" doesn't necessarily help them to understand that, no, THIS is the part that they don't completely understand, and that is why this seems confusing. There is NO substitute for a teacher who is paying attention to HOW students are thinking about material. While flipped classrooms are great for revealing those gaps-- they are not very good at remediating them to start with.

And there is a good chance of it enhancing the current mediocracy, by chasing the dynamic and engaged teachers away.

I wonder if performance studies is a required course for teachers.

This is a great synopsis of the problems inherent in "flipping" classrooms-- or reducing instructional delivery to prerecorded lectures for any purpose, actually:

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-problem-with-instructional-videos.html

This flipped classroom concept seems like a very convenient way to shift the burden of teaching away from the teacher and onto the student.

Exactly.

It's an appropriate model for pretty capable students who have learning supports internalized or more broadly available to them as they go, but it's not a good idea for students who struggle already.

On the other hand, really great teachers have never struggled with that 'third way' identified up-thread-- the notion of not using up so darned MUCH class time with fluff/nonsense and therefore having plenty of time to: a) cover the material and b) ask students to use that material. But beyond a certain level you can't get it ALL into class time. I think that the problem is that with NCLB/CC testing-testing-testing mandates, this idea is going nowhere-- there IS no class time anymore for this idea or any other.



YES. This is already happening, incidentally-- this is PRECISELY the model that virtual charter schools use. Parents are 'learning coaches' (Yeah right-- whatever-- we're the ones TEACHING our kids... and everyone who knows anything about the model knows that-- at most-- the "teachers" do about 25% of the 'teaching' for the vast, VAST majority of students... only kids like my DD find that extremely truncated instruction 'adequate' and that's because they are able to drink from the fire-hose once a week, basically.)

I do think that bringing the actual WORK of learning back into classrooms (rather than sending it all home) is a good idea. I do. But something gonna have to go to make room for it. Personally, I think that I'd like for it to be test prep.

I may be in the minority here, but I am very hopeful about the concept of flipped classrooms, and how it can help accelerated learners. Among the benefits of the flipped classroom are the following:

1) Each student can advance at their own pace. They can watch whichever lecture is appropriate for them, whether or not a single other student in their class is ready for it.

2) The lectures can be rewound and the explanation of difficult concepts can be watched again and again until the student understands, or formulates the appropriate question to ask in school the next day.

3) There can be different video lectures that teach the same concept done by different teachers with different styles. Some teachers may like to do hands-on demonstrations, while others use visuals, and others talk it out. With lectures done in many different styles, students can identify their preferred style, but watch presentations in other styles when concepts are difficult to grasp in their usual style.

4) None of the video lecturers should be particularly bad. The same can't be said about every classroom teacher. FWIW, I don't think Khan is a very good lecturer, and his videos could certainly benefit from more planning, and editing. (This is my opinion based on videos a bit more advanced than anything a gradeschooler would be watching, though.)

5) I got interrupted and lost my train of thought.

I don't see how it will actually be self-paced, though-- because the "work-work" is still happening IN the classroom in this version of things.

So an advanced student can watch all of this instruction at his/her own pace, all right...

but they can't DO anything about it without the cooperation of whoever is holding the keys to assignments and assessments.

I disagree with you on point two, as well-- if the explanation doesn't make sense the FIRST time, sure, maybe rewinding and watching it again once or twice is a good idea, (for fairly complicated ideas, I mean) but beyond that, the problem is likely to be something more than missing some nuance of the presentation. The problem is likely to be that there is an assumed bit of background knowledge which isn't shared by the student.

A good teacher only offers the SAME explanation a couple of times to a student. At that point, one switches gears and starts probing to find out what the student is thinking at each step along the way. This is the only method of finding the underlying problem and correcting it efficiently. It's also WAY more efficient at finding trouble spots and working more intensively over those.

The other thing that my DD has found with this sort of instruction is that invariably, there are 'missing' steps in logic or illustration... and while some of the time those things seem relatively minor, sometimes they make concepts/methods which feel alien to a student totally incomprehensible instead. Because an unnatural method doesn't resonate with a student and they can't just "follow" the logical progression for themselves without seeing each.and.every step. Gifted students will simply shrug and find their own way around it, as often as not, inventing a new way that DOES make sense to themselves... and the teacher is none the wiser (until it matters later on, when the lack of full understanding crops up as a gap in a later concept), but the less capable students just spin.


I do agree with DAD on points 3 and 4. And frequently on 5, which will come as no surprise to anyone.

My prediction is that-- in practice, I mean, and based on our experiences with a variation upon this kind of model-- a PG student can watch (or read) the entire YEAR of pre-algebra before the end of September, but then get to SIT and do nothing meaningful, as his/her classmates limp along without much instructional support for months... and months...


Oh-- I just realized! That won't be a problem. THAT kind of student can "cement his/her knowledge through group work with less able learners." Perfect!

My most pressing questions, having lived with this kind of "instructional" model for some time--

a) how do students ask questions IN REAL TIME? Because if they cannot, then they will wind up developing misconceptions/stalling until they can get it corrected... which certainly is neither efficient nor good for learning.

b) what about students who require redirection during instruction? A video recording doesn't notice when Johnny is tuning out. Or is that now on Johnny's mom and dad? Or is it on Johnny himself? Doesn't this just "empower" students to "own their own self-regulation" to an even greater degree? At what point does someone stand up and note how incredibly developmentally inappropriate that whole notion is for children and most adolescents? I mean, sure-- it works. FOR ADULTS. With solid executive function. That's basically what the research here does show. Until mid-20's, most human beings aren't great at KNOWING what works best for themselves in terms of deep learning.


Seriously, though, the upshot is that this places the whip in parents' hands, the burden for doing the least entertaining part of "learning" squarely on students who aren't mature enough to self-regulate well, and takes the active portions of learning back into classrooms where there cannot possibly be adequate support for it given student-teacher ratios. What this will mean is even LESS attention in classrooms for kids who are high-potential, and even more use of those kids as miniature teacher's aides, while they gnash their teeth at having to sit through MONTHS of material that they went through in the first few days of school.

I also suspect that for kids who work slowly but deeply, this is going to prevent them from ever being identified as gifted in the first place.

DAD22,
I hate to sound so cynical, but the benefits you outline aren't likely to happen frequently in practice. Although some teachers individualize instruction, most will keep students together. Students who have mastered a concept will likely be used to "help" their classmates who don't get it rather than accelerate. If textbooks are any indication, I doubt the videos will include the variety or be of the quality you hope for. I don't think watching the same video over and over will help students to achieve true understanding, so class time will be used by the teacher with the help of students who get it to teach those who didn't learn from the videos.

This can be (and already has been) easily addressed by letting software be the key to additional assignments and lectures. First the students watch a video lecture. Next they apply what they have learned in the form of an electronic assignment. The assignment is automatically graded upon completion, and if mastery has been demonstrated, the child advances automatically.


I addressed this to some degree with point 3: You have access to more than one lecture on the same topic. If one skips a step that you can't follow, try the next one. Chances are every single lecture on the topic wont have the same problem.



That's exactly what in-class time is for in the flipped classroom. Since the teacher isn't giving lectures, they have more time for probing each student's thought process and addressing misunderstandings.



In the pilot study I read about, the students were allowed to learn several years worth of material in a single school year. Some of them advanced so quickly that the teachers started looking for ways to slow them down because they didn't feel comfortable teaching material so many years advanced of their usual curriculum.



I don't see the importance of asking questions in real-time. Then again, I never once asked a question in school. In the flipped classroom, questions are asked the day after lectures are viewed. Students still get to ask questions before they are expected to apply what they have learned, so I don't see the need to develop any misconceptions.


On the flip side (pun fully intended) the whole class doesn't have to be distracted by Johnny's wandering focus. And Susie's. And Billy's... etc. I don't see a great difference in the responsibilities placed on the students due to flipping the classroom. Knowledge has to be acquired through the senses, it can't be downloaded into student brains like in The Matrix. Students need to pay attention or they wont learn. When students fail to learn, progress reports show it, and issues are addressed by the student, teachers, and parents. Students are already expected to supplement what they do in school at home. If they can't focus at home, they wont perform well either way.


Again, you are assuming that students wont be allowed to compact. When I say there is promise in the idea, I say so partly because I expect it to make compacting much more common than it is. I have already addressed how the flipped classroom gives teachers MORE one on one time with students to address their problem areas. If that's not adequate then the traditional classroom is even worse.

That might skew your perspective a bit.

Some learners operate in a very active Socratic approach, they create a web of "unpromoted" hypotheses and rely on key questions to validate their constructs. Being an active process, the structure can become rather diaphonous without input at the time they are ready to promote the material to learned.

Different strokes for different folks. Socratic learners will find themselves strangled, I think.

Of course, now that we have the largest repository of information ever assembled available on demand, a lot of those Socratic learners will take to the internet for immediate satisfaction of their curiosity. Results will vary, because just because it's large, doesn't mean it's good.

I have been holding out hope that the flipped classroom would be a great idea, and I do tend to agree with Dad22 on a lot of points.

There is nothing to say that every student must be doing the same "homework" in class -- of course, it will work out that way in many instances, where teachers don't want to have to help students on different chapters at the same time, and it will probably homogenize down to the lowest common denominator in the same way that everything else does in education.

But to my mind, a student could easily get ahead on the videos and do the "homework" from several chapters ahead in class while other students are working on earlier stuff. It would not have to bottleneck in the classroom the way the lectures do. Teacher can only give one lecture at a time, but can wander around the classroom and help with many different levels. The student who is far ahead will probably not need to be asking questions that would confuse the other kids, anyway.

In practice, of course, I can easily see it sticking right there, when the teacher says, "why don't you just wait until we catch up to there, as you're confusing the rest of the class", and kid ends up twiddling his thumbs for a month. That *should* be a motivation to find the answer somewhere else and get on with it, but for, say, my son, it would probably be a motivation to twiddle his thumbs.

So what are all of the other 34 students doing while ONE student is "getting intensive assistance" from the teacher, or getting his/her questions from the lecture answered?

The problem with that kind of mental model is that in any class of 35 students, probably three of them-- at a minimum-- will have the same question about the lecture presentation... on any given day, over any given material.

Asking those things in real time rather than going to EACH student to find out what questions they have... means that the teacher has only spent 1/3 as much time on that question.

That's time that then is freed up for OTHER activities.

I see problems with the "learn this, then come back" approach that are a bit difficult to get across to anyone without considerable classroom experience. There's a REASON why teachers offer instruction to groups of students all at once, and mostly it is to benefit the students themselves.

As long as there is only one teacher and twenty or more students, one-on-one time just isn't going to be adequate for >80% of them, and it's got little to do with the relative quality of the teaching, though of course awful teaching makes it worse.

I'm a big believer in experiential learning and cooperative learning within a classroom. It benefits everyone in that classroom, and it's a GOOD reason to have students working on the same material at the same time-- and at roughly the same rate. It's a time-tested model, and the Socratic aspects of it have certainly stood the test of time as well, I'd say.

I think it is a dreadful mistake to throw that particular baby out with the bathwater.

YES. And for high-ability students who operate Socratically, you HAVE to keep them fed or they drift away and occupy themselves. Teachers don't do this because the rate-- fundamentally-- makes them uncomfortable, as someone else noted above.

The internet is not a substitute for a live expert-- at least not for most Socratically-operating learners. Because it's all about asking the RIGHT questions to get the information you're seeking-- and as anyone exasperated and shouting incoherently at a search engine knows... the internet is incredibly OBTUSE about details like "noooooo... I wanted to know about WHY _____, not how to build MY OWN from recycled materials..."

Honestly, non-Socratic learners are rarer than Socratic ones. IME as an educator, I mean. My estimate is that the percentage among science and pre-health majors is about 4 or 5 to 1.

Among Gen Ed students, it's still about 3 to 1, and the ratio becomes even higher during the college years. Many students are conditioned to consider understanding to be a black-and-white phenomenon, and Socratic learning is antithetical to that, which makes students-- initially-- very uncomfortable.

Experiential learning is directly related to the Socratic model, incidentally, through the common thread of "inquiry-based learning" and that is the entire theoretical engine behind flipping classrooms in the first place.

Experiential/Socratic/Inquiry-led learning is a good thing. But not having to wait to get basic questions answered is also a VERY good thing.

For anyone that "never asks questions" I offer-- what do you do when you're challenged and do not have apparent access to the answers that you need, then? I understand not asking questions, as I tend to be that kind of individual, as well. But as a teacher, I'd feel that a student was not sufficiently challenged if they didn't EVER have questions that they couldn't answer for themselves without assistance.

That, to me, is part and parcel of keeping students learning within their proximal zone.

But there are so many assumptions here. First, you've assumed that the lecture provides everything the student needs. It almost certainly won't. Our experience with my son's online learning is that an enormous amount of material is missing. Of the 7 online classes my son did last year, only ONE (CTY Forensics) provided enough information in the lectures and textbook for him to really understand the material without assistance from me.

You've also assumed that a video format can provide enough information. There are subjects in which this is simply not the case. Physics and Java programming spring to mind. I've helped DS with physics and my husband and another programmer helped him with Java. There are nuances in both subjects that simply must be taught, live, on the fly. In physics, the big one is how to recognize how you need to set up problems in order to solve them. This is NOT a single idea but a set of ideas and approaches that vary and build upon one another as a student advances. And there are other nuances, like the difference between a horse-cart system and a horse and a cart. Students don't all have the same confusion points, and you need a teacher there to help because the number of confusion points in some subjects is effectively infinite. You can't cover that in a video.

With Java, the issues seemed related to knowing how to do stuff when the teacher's assumption that something would just work, didn't. An example is a security exception that was thrown when my son had to do something with an applet in his final project. The teacher assumed the applet would just work, presumably because it worked x years ago when the course was designed. It took two adults with 40 years experience 3 hours to solve that. For something complex like this, there is no way it can happen via email or even the next day in a class when everyone is confused.

(Please don't argue that outdated courses don't count because they should be up to date. Obviously, they should be up to date. But there is no way this will happen in the real world!)

Yes-- and Val's post is a great example of why the sciences still operate with a Lecture-recitation-tutorial-lab model. It works, and it reaches into a variety of learning modalities.

If you really want students to learn, they have to THINK, and they have to get pretty much immediate feedback about their thinking, which is quite a different thing that giving them immediate feedback on either: a) what someone else thinks (e.g. multiple choice or t/f quizzes) or b) their conclusions (again, assessment-based feedback). That only provides yes/no-- not HINTS based upon the nature of incorrect answers and the apparent certainty with which they are offered.

It takes a subject expert who sees years down the road in an educational journey to understand WHY it is not such a great idea for a student to be thinking that slope = rise/run, and to gently correct the semantics there, while simultaneously offering praise for the procedural know-how demonstrated.

Only live instruction/coaching can do both of those things in real time, and with a great deal of efficiency. The assessment-based model only knows that they are able to operate the steps in the procedure correctly. It can't check on the THINKING behind them.

While that isn't necessarily a criticism of flipped classrooms per se, since ideally a flipped classroom has experiential learning happening, it is a criticism of the inherent CLUNKY features of taking all instruction out of classrooms. That feedback loop doesn't just exist during "writing" or "lab exercises," or "practice problems." It should be happening during the delivery, too-- at which point the person DOING the delivery should be able to 'read' the room and respond appropriately.

I can't explain it, but there is a sound that perplexed students make en masse. You just KNOW, and you stop and you probe-- but that response is invisible to students, since they don't see that in OTHER classes when I teach the same material, I don't pause there.

KWIM?

This is why I say that only classroom educators who have experience with delivering the same content to different groups of students really "get" why video recordings cannot replace good teaching in an equivalent fashion. A video recording doesn't slow itself when it sees a student's brow furrow over a choice of words, then continue when it clears spontaneously with a clear moment of realization. Could the student rewind a video? Certainly. But what if hearing me again doesn't resolve the question over-- why THAT word there? If they know what the word means, but not WHY I chose it, I mean.

EVERY class, I would eventually find about 5% of students who I knew were "representative" of different groups of learners within that class, and who attended lectures regularly. They were my touchstones, and I watched them while I lectured. ALWAYS. If one of them looked confused, I paused, and I asked. It was either that or have ten more come to my office later (in addition to the other five who were NEVER going to show up-- but needed the answer, too). Answering the questions as they come up is much, much better pedagogically, because it means no backtracking, and-- if you're willing to go with the analogy that learning material is like building a house-- potentially ripping out drywall to get to a misplaced stud.

The problem with flipped classrooms for highly capable learners is a subtle one-- but related to that last point. The difference is toxic for high-speed learners, though-- how much material can an 'average' student cover in a week? Maybe a stud-wall, right? Now-- what about a PG child? Most of the first floor, drywall and all. Which one of them is going to have more little things to tweak when the teacher finally has time to spare? When is it better to make adjustments to the framing in a load-bearing wall, hmm? Before-- or after-- you've constructed the rest of the framing?

Those highly capable students can absorb VAST amounts of material in a hurry-- which multiples the number of "little tweaks" tremendously. I know this. I know this because I've had to do that with my DD-- and it is painful for a student to run through assessment/review of half a semester's worth of understanding and hear "not quite" and "that's close, but..." dozens and DOZENS of times in a couple of days. It's punitive. The thing is, if they were learning from another human being in real-time, they would never have HAD those misconceptions to start with. Kids who drink from the fire-hose like that shouldn't have to accept second-rate instructional pedagogy in order to get learning at the rate they need.

Good teaching is about communication as much as learning is. A video isn't "communication" any more than a textbook is.

In short-- half of the problem is that students can't ask questions in real time. The other problem is just as large in a pedagogical sense; teachers can't ask students open-ended/flexible questions in real-time, either.

Working on their assignments or viewing additional lectures. It seems very similar to a Montessori approach to me.


As you've pointed out earlier, the same answer may not satisfy those 3 children with the same question. A good teacher will tailor their response to their audience, right?



I just don't see this the same way you do. In my experience, students rarely interrupted a teacher's lecture to ask questions. The questions came to them when they tried to apply what they were being taught. Since most students aren't interrupting lectures, a video is a decent stand in. Flipping the classroom gives them a greater opportunity to get their questions answered when they realize what they don't know. Until they try to apply it, I think students know that they haven't grasped the subject, but they don't know why. They don't even know what question to ask to get things cleared up until they try to go through things step by step and get stuck.

Personally, I hated wasting my time listening to teachers answer questions which were already clear to me. I knew it was slowing down an already dreadful pace of learning. If 3 or more kids have the same question at any time, what about the kids who DON'T have that question? Forcing them to listen to the answer is a waste of time. I guess the trick is to make sure that time doesn't get wasted anyway, for a different reason. I think that's possible. They certainly accomplish this in Montessori classrooms.


When experiential learning is appropriate, I don't see why you can't group even with flipped classrooms. So your group is less than the size of your class. So what. Most middle schools have more than one class operating at each grade level, too. Grab all the 6th graders from all 5 classrooms that are ready for the experiment or demonstration and get them together. In my experience, experiential learning happens so seldom that it has little bearing on what the default mode of operations should be for a classroom.

Dad22, you didn't respond to any of my points. I'd be interested in knowing your thoughts.

I know, and while that is okay, and our opinions may simple differ based on interpretations of facts, I'm trying to explain why your experiences as a STUDENT may not reflect the reality of what is going on between students (as a group) and teacher as subject expert.


Right. Which demonstrates that you weren't in classrooms where students were ASKED TO WORK problems. This is never how I taught, nor how most of my (STEM) colleagues did, at any of four different institutions.


Correct-- but it's far more efficient to bring that part of the process into the instruction rather than shoving the instruction itself aside as worthless.

With all due respect, there is no way to KNOW that listening to a particular explanation is a "waste" of anyone's time. Ever. Including your own. Is it a "waste" of my time to listen to an explanation of something that I know perfectly well? Wellllll-- no, not really. I mean, assuming that I'm a student in a class where I'm actually learning something to begin with, generally such explanations serve as a window into the thinking of others, and actually DO benefit me, albeit in less obvious ways than my personal "Aha" moments with the textbook. They also benefit me in social ways-- by forcing me to consider the variety of needs that my peers have, as well as my own needs. It also happens with some regularity that an explanation to ONE student will answer questions that three or four others didn't (yet) realize that they had. Is it wrong that none of the five of them had to "struggle" with a homework problem later because of that??

Obviously, I'm not suggesting that grouping and pacing based upon ability is a bad thing, here-- NOT AT ALL. I'm suggesting that in light of that kind of grouping, instruction DOES need to be offered in real-time. If there are students in that grouping who are a 'drag' on instruction, then get them extra help or get them into a more appropriate placement.

But even gifted students need to learn that a classroom is a learning community and that others have strengths and weaknesses as learners, too. Even the 'smart' kids ask dumb things sometimes, and that's actually good for everyone who hears those questions (and their answers). It gives students a way of considering other ways of approaching/contemplating the material.

Actually, that point (in previous paragraph) is one that people who have had kids in B&M settings probably underestimate significantly. My DD has not had much opportunity to witness that by virtue of all instruction being "canned" like in a flipped classroom, and the results have been positively TOXIC.

This isn't about Montessori-- this is about taking do/show-one, teach-one OUT of a communal setting and making it a pair of one-way streets. That's bad news, IMO. A good college classroom has a lot more in common with Montessori than most former students realize, I think.

Research does indicate that as a supplement, recorded lectures are good. It also shows that for some (memorization-based) material, they can be an adequate substitute for attending live lectures, when those live lectures are relatively non-interactive an non-dynamic. But it also shows that when students use them as a substitute for attending more meaningful/complex instructional lectures, their understanding definitely suffers.

Most classroom teachers could have told anyone that. Students have been doing this forever-- getting lecture notes rather than coming to class themselves. It is a poor substitute, though better than NOTHING.

I'm just saying that the choice shouldn't be "recorded" or "nothing."

Sorry Val. You're in my Queue. I think it would be disrespectful to give you a short response... so I'm choosing a delayed response instead. I hope you understand.

I seem to recall questions being asked. We did have some lecturers whose English wasn't good enough to rephrase what they had said - they just repeated what they had already said like a rewound recording. It was not helpful and I can't see rewinding a video to be helpful either. Also if I don't understand something at the beginning and therefore can't follow the next step I need to get an answer now not tomorrow.

Finally why go to a class to do busywork slowly with a bunch of people who probably haven't done the prep work and will ask the same questions over and over again or expect you to do their work for you?

DAD22 has convinced me.

Yet Khan's niece Nadia preferred his videos to live tutoring sessions because she could watch them multiple times and go at her own pace. There may certainly be times when most of a video lecture is ineffective during the first viewing because of a question that pops up at the start. On the other hand, there are times when most of a live lecture is ineffective because it goes in real-time and a student didn't even have time to reflect on what they may have misunderstood in the first part, and formulate an appropriate question. Sometimes a single sentence perfectly communicates an idea, but the concept isn't understood until the student has time to reflect on it. Videos give students that time.



As I've seen this implemented, the teachers know if the students played the videos or not. So the teachers can make a judgement call about helping the kids who didn't view them or answering questions for those that did. Unless you're waiting for a question to be answered, there's no reason to proceed slowly. I don't know why you are implying that some students will expect others to do their work for them, or how that would be specific to flipped classrooms.

The teachers have no such discretion, unless they've decided they want a career change. Otherwise, NCLB and testing-based teacher assessments pretty much demand that the teachers waste all their time propping up those who failed to do the required viewing.

Teachers have methods available to them to prevent uncooperative students from impacting the learning of cooperative students. They can write letters to the parents, send the uncooperative students to the principal, set up parent-teacher conferences... Flipping the classroom doesn't change this dynamic.

In a flipped classroom, teachers are available during class time to respond to the students' needs that were not fulfilled by the video. However, I am hopeful that often times the video itself will be sufficient.


I am trying to explain why I am hopeful that the concept of classroom flipping has merit. I am not here to defend early iterations of online learning. Of course the early iterations will be the most problematic. Hopefully with a few iterations, the coursework of the 6 deficient classes can be made sufficient.


In a flipped classroom, the video lectures don't represent the entirety of all instruction given to the students. Therefore the video format doesn't have to be 100% sufficient for every single concept of every single subject.



The fact that numerous students have learned both of these subjects exclusively through the books and/or online materials contradicts your statement.


In the flipped classroom, confusion points can be addressed by the teacher the next day. I don't see why the things you've mentioned can't be covered in a video. Perhaps you can explain.



Teachers make assumptions about things working in flipped as well as traditional classes. I've had teachers assume that the overhead projector would work, ruining in-class lecture time. I don't see how this is a flipped-classroom issue. Perhaps you can explain.

Flipped from what?

What exactly is an unflipped classroom? It sounds like a strawman. How is this even a serious conversation?

1) Not all failures to perform after-school work are due to lack of cooperation. There are also problems of environment, of access, and of competing priorities, most of which are outside of the child's control.

2) Escalating to the parents or principal doesn't solve very many problems with non-cooperative students today.

Thanks to Val, I spent some time last night pondering Java and Physics specifically as they relate to video learning, and I want to make a point about another reason I am hopeful for video learning.

Videos can be more than just a lecturer with a writing implement drawing things and commenting. Videos can include visual learning aids. Physics often deals with bodies in motion, which lends itself nicely to animation and video representation. I can't remember any specific physics lecture from high school, but I remember watching this video with Paul Hewitt in class:


At first I thought Java didn't lend itself well to visualization, but I realized that's not true. It depends what you're doing with Java. For instance here's a video showing how a binary search tree responds to insertions.


As a visual learner, I could say that 99% of schooling was problematic for me, but I'd be lying. I already mentioned that I picked things up quickly despite the fact that they weren't presented in my preferred approach. So why is that? I think it's because good teachers break things down into their simplest components. When something is simple enough, a student can compensate for concept presentations that are less than ideal for them. Students do this all the time, and shifting which students are doing it to what degree is a trade-off, with costs and benefits to be weighed and balanced.

Actually, that is what some radical advocates of this kind of pedagogy are suggesting SHOULD be true.

The reason why Val's experiences and mine are reflective of a practical examination of that approach is that online coursework DOES tend to use this approach, and it's the only current example available outside of a few hybrid programs (mostly in higher ed).

I'm not saying that "visual" is a problem. Far from it. Just that this is removing the give-and-take that should be happening in classrooms and replacing it with something that research has (repeatedly) shown is NOT 'better' for any students, and IS worse for a good number of them as a substitute for live instruction.

The best strategy based on evidence is one in which students are attending live presentations that they can watch AGAIN later.

That hybrid approach has a LOT to recommend it.

The ideal, from a research/evidence-based perspective is:

a) live lecture (30% of class meeting time)
b) available content for student learning OUTSIDE of class time, including assessments (though security and integrity are huge barriers there, as are ways of including highest levels of Bloom's taxonomy in assessment without a human-human interaction),
c) 'flipped' classroom time-- time to apply concepts learned in a and b; (70% of class meeting time).


That's roughly how I ran my classrooms as a college professor. It's roughly how the most talented of my DD's teachers ran THEIR classes, though they were frequently hampered significantly by the platform which mandated far less classroom time than was actually necessary for 90%+ of students.

That is NOT a pure "flipped" classroom, however. It differs in two particulars:

1. students are given INITIAL instruction by a live instructor who can 'check in' with students in real-time regarding their preparedness and foundation for tackling the material being presented as they observe, and

2. it relies heavily on a 'back-and-forth' approach, not a purely linear/flowcharted one re: learning. It's more integrated, and relies on a wider variety of learning modes. Textbooks or other print materials are also an integral part of this model.

As Bostonian once pointed out-- maybe people who don't like to read aren't actually college material. While I know plenty of highly intelligent people whose favored mode ISN'T text, I have to agree on some level that just because some 25% of people prefer VIDEO to textbooks, that isn't a reason to deprive the other 75% of the alternative. Plurality is a very good thing.

I think that I am disagreeing with you based upon my own experiences as an educator-- not that your anecdotes above are incorrect, but that I strongly suspect that you are not accurately perceiving their relative frequency in average classroom settings.

My own experience leads me to know that what students PREFER is not always good for them educationally, firstly. Secondly, it's also true that students with relatively slow processing speeds may have difficulty with a lecture that proceeds too rapidly for them to follow in "real-time", by FAR the more common problem is the one that you've minimized-- the issue of a small gap, question, or misunderstood point undermining the student's ability to move forward or understand the rest of the whole.

I've seen that particular face-palm moment again and again and again... and again. It is the ENTIRE reason why dynamic teachers pay such close attention while they 'teach' from the front of the room-- because that presentation is entirely wasted if a student gets hung up, and it's far, far more work to backtrack later (even with just the one student).

As a student, as a teacher, and again as a parent watching how online classroom interactions happen, I've seen this. It's the single thing that makes "lecture" most ineffective to begin with, but flipping the classroom to a static information source makes it WORSE, not better.

The problem is not only that STUDENTS can't ask questions of a video. The other part of the problem is that instructors don't know-- even if they can make educated guesses a good deal of the time-- precisely where the trouble spots will be with a particular cohort of students. It's a process of dynamic discovery for both sides, and it's very difficult to predict ahead of time.

In part, the hybrid/integrated approach works best because, as Dad rightly notes earlier, you sometimes don't know what you don't know until you try to implement it or integrate it with other knowledge. The trouble is that neither does the instructor about 10-20% of the time. You can predict, in my experience, about 60-70% of the places that students will have difficulty, but that additional 30-40% will EAT UP class time and then some in a flipped classroom, and you'll wind up (as the instructor) answering the same question 3, 4, or 5 times in five minutes... just to deal with 2-3% of it. Idealistic views of how static instruction work are great-- but they don't make it any more efficient to iron out those little misunderstandings, and that is (mostly) what teaching is all about to begin with. A group instructional setting is simply more efficient for everyone from a time-management standpoint. Even if it does annoy the top 5% as a 'waste' of time, and confuse the bottom 10% even more than they already were, re: the pace that suits the middle of the distribution.

So a long session OUGHT to include brief bursts of direct instruction punctuating applied work/exploration with the concepts being introduced.

My objection to flipped classroom ideals is the sheer-- well, I consider it lunacy-- of thinking that 'instruction' can be a simple "transfer" of information in a static sense. That works for memorization. Nothing else.

Also, no offense to autodidacts, but it's also been my experience that those who have only learned what THEY have sought and taught themselves tend to almost invariably have two sequelae which are related: a) they seldom have multiple ways of considering/viewing the understanding that they possess, never having been exposed to views other than their own way of understanding it, and b) they have some strange gaps as a result of never having had an instructor explore/probe for those things as they learned the material. The best autodidacts tend to accumulate that understanding from multiple sources and challenge themselves with different approaches using different learning modes through a version of immersion. They are rare. More common is the autodidact that cannot learn from others because of a rigid mental approach to gaining understanding-- and that does tend to result in less than what I'd call actual mastery, though it can superficially seem that way. This is one reason why I am skeptical that an explanation aimed at the middle quartile is a "complete waste of time" for the top 10% who 'understand' the material already. Assuming that the top 10% is learning something new in that material (as I think is often NOT the case in undifferentiated classrooms), then no, it's not a complete waste of time to consider a different perspective and check your OWN understanding by mentally composing an answer yourself and checking it against what the instructor offers.

As long as a textbook/video can't respond adequately to the following kinds of questions, it will be a poor pedagogical substitute for a live instructor--

Is this related to {earlier topic}? Through {mechanism/event discussed in a prerequisite course}?

Do you have to do it that way?

Is it okay if I looked at it like this instead?

Why did you do that there?

I'm not sure that I understand why you chose ______ as a method/reason/etc. Can you explain?

Is there a reason to label those axes in that manner?

Is that a standard symbol or will just any variable do?

Did you consider _______ ?

Apparently there is some research into the effectiveness of flipped classrooms:

http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/teaching-guides/teaching-activities/flipping-the-classroom/

"Mazur and colleagues have published results suggesting that the PI method results in significant learning gains when compared to traditional instruction (2001). In 1998, Richard Hake gathered data on 2084 students in 14 introductory physics courses taught by traditional methods (defined by the instructor as relying primarily on passive student lectures and algorithmic problem exams), allowing him to define an average gain for students in such courses using pre/post-test data. Hake then compared these results to those seen with interactive engagement methods, defined as “heads-on (always) and hands-on (usually) activities which yield immediate feedback through discussion with peers and/or instructors” (Hake p. 65) for 4458 students in 48 courses. He found that students taught with interactive engagement methods exhibited learning gains almost two standard deviations higher than those observed in the traditional courses (0.48 +/- 0.14 vs. 0.23 +/- 0.04)"


http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcam...-with-videos-increased-test-scores/40470

"The 85 students in the flipped course at San Jose State watched the edX lecture videos at home and attended class twice a week to practice what they had learned and ask questions. Two other sections of students took a traditional version of the course.

The midterm-examination scores of students in the flipped section were higher than those in the traditional sections, said Mr. Ghadiri. Although the midterm questions were more difficult for the flipped students, their median score was 10 to 11 points higher."

http://www.blendmylearning.com/2011/08/31/the-results/

"Among the students in the study who had valid scores on the pre and post course assessment, the results were similar for the treatment and the control group. Students in the “control” or traditional summer school course, on average, increased their percentage of correct answers by 5.2% over the five-week period. Students in the “treatment” or Khan class, on average, increased their percentage of correct answers 6.4%

...


Prior to seeing the results of the summer experiment, the teacher predicted that her students would do better on a traditional measure of proficiency such as the California Standards Test or CST if she ran her classroom in the Khan manner versus the traditional classroom approach. Given that she was not a convert prior to this pilot and developed these opinions only through teaching the course, we find this an interesting perspective to consider in the dialogue about how teachers will respond to blended learning."

This isn't a flipped classroom. Mazur teaches interactively, which is entirely different from the flipped model being discussed here. For the sake of precision, "flipped" here as defined in that link I used has means "students watch videos at home and do homework in class."

What Mazur does is probably a highly effective technique that 22B alluded to back on page 1 of this thread, and which HowlerKarma clearly practices: mixed lecturing and tutorial-type instruction. PM me with an email address if you want a copy of the article.


College students. This discussion is about the perils of using this model in a K-12 environment, which is very different from college students. They're more mature (executive function) and have chosen to be there.




This is a blog post and not a peer-reviewed article. And the author admits the following very serious shortcomings:

"First, no statistician will take our results particularly seriously, and they shouldn’t. The sample size is too small to attribute any real significance to the findings. Secondly, the pilot was very brief, lasting only five weeks, or twenty-four class sessions of two hours each."

I'm a scientist. I know that stuff that can look so good in a pilot experiment, yet be proven wrong when you do the real thing. This is just so common.

That isn't very precise, though. If 99% of the lectures are watched in video format at home, but one day the teacher lectures in class... is that not flipped? I would consider any classroom to be flipped if the majority of lecture-style concept explanations are experienced at home. As you can probably tell, I don't think it matters specifically how that exposure happens. If teachers usually use books, video recordings, audio recordings, or even interactive software to facilitate the initial explanation of a topic at home, and then help students work through their understanding in class later... that's flipped to me.


To be fair, not all college students have a choice about being there, but I appreciate the differences. Also, in the OP it was not clear that this discussion was to be constrained to k-12.



I don't know what the point of your post is. I feel it's a bit accusatory toward me, as though I somehow misrepresented the link I posted. I understand the shortcomings of the data, but it does speak to the idea that a flipped classroom is doomed from the start, which seems to be a popular opinion around these parts. Maybe I'm getting the wrong impression.

As an aside...
We mentioned the Socratic Method earlier, and the first article linked (at CFT) dives into Bloom's Taxonomy. Which kinda struck a chord... as the taxonomy sees field knowledge progressing:
1. Remembering
2. Understanding
3. Applying
4. Analyzing
5. Evaluating
6. Creating

but when you are wired towards Socratic learning (or abstract/system thinking,) it is more like:
1. Analyzing
2. Evaluating
3. Applying
4. Creating
5. Understanding
6. Remembering
(with some feedback loops thrown in)

Which can be a bit more tragic with the flipped classroom as in theory the first 5 steps may be completely inaccessible during the "out of class" part.

The Science article didn't say anything about videos. It's all about interactivity in the lecture hall. I think that part of the Vanderbilt piece wasn't written carefully.


Sorry; I'm not trying to be accusatory. I'm actually treating you like a peer in science, which is a compliment. Scientists criticize each other's ideas all the time. This is how good science is supposed to work. If you aren't used to it, it can be offputting. But once you get used to it, you start to really appreciate the colleagues who aren't shy about finding holes in your logic. I just sent a manuscript out to 3 people an hour ago and asked them to rip it apart. I meant it.

But like I said, preliminary data can be so seductive, and yet so wrong. This is why it's called preliminary and why it's dangerous to draw conclusions from it. IMO, that mini-study was good as a first step toward getting an answer to a question, but was in no way an answer or even a reliable hint.

Hope is nice, but in the world of education, it rarely pans out.

For example, you're assuming there will be multiple iterations. In the majority of cases, there almost certainly won't be. DS's Java class lectures were so old, his final assignment required him to use a technology that isn't really used anymore because of security problems. There was a big mistake in an early physics lab he had to do. The data for a uniform acceleration experiment had serious flaws, as in, the uniformly accelerating object stopped, went backwards, and moved with constant velocity. I tracked down the guy who wrote the course and suggested he might want to fix the data. He answered:

> I wrote course several years ago and I am no longer associated with it.
>
> The data is actual data generated in a lab, not perfect data predicted
> mathematically.

Translation: I could not care less. PFO.


I'm one of them. I'm an autodidact. I've been teaching myself stuff for decades. I've learned that success in self-teaching requires three things:

• Many resources (books, Google, video and/or audio recordings)
• An ability to pose important and relevant questions that can be answered with the tools above.
• Discipline (a lot of it)

Single resources rarely have all the information one needs to learn something. I have the financial resources to have access to many books and other learning materials. Most teenagers don't. As a HG+ adult with a science PhD, I am very good at points 2 and 3. But these two skills didn't exist in me at birth. I had to learn them, and that took a lot of time. In fact, point 2 is an important part of a PhD or a research-based master's. I doubt that even gifted high school kids have these skills (especially the second one) for the most part. I've worked with or supervised a lot of very bright adults who don't have these skills. It's like they flounder around, not realizing that they're not asking the right questions. I don't know, but these skills might only develop in people who are very good at a given pursuit (i.e. a HG+ athlete or artist might see in me the same inabilities in those fields that I've seen in others in my areas of strength).

Plus, there are also the points about Socratic vs. auto-didactic learners.
A major problem of a flipped classroom is that it puts a large part of the burden of teaching onto the students. This is wrong, IMO. The whole point of being a teacher is that you're supposed to know so much more than the students, you can do more than just impart information from a textbook.

You might argue that teachers don't always measure up in this regard, and I would agree with you. But moving to the extreme of video teaching is, I think, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So, yes, I've decided for now that flipped classrooms, as practiced in that link I used, are a bad idea. I do see merit in asking students to watch someone else's videos after they've been exposed to the ideas in class. Right now, I think that interactive live teaching is probably the best way to get your points across.

Point worth making more than once, here--

Val and I are both scientists. We were both trained to interact over ideas in the same semi-confrontational sort of manner.

Apologies if that seems rude or aggressive; it really isn't intended that way.


Oh, and yes, yes, yes to Mazur's interactive approach.

MOST of my successful peers/colleagues who teach STEM at the post-secondary level (and many at the secondary level) wouldn't dream of doing things any other way.

It just flat out WORKS best for the widest swathe of students.

I'm going to quote my own post from a page back, because there is something that I needed to clarify in it.


I'll also note that most students prefer live demonstrations to watching them on YouTube.

The reason? As one helpfully pointed out, there was always the possibility-- but not the guarantee-- that I'd set something on FIRE. It was engaging because of the lack of predictability, in other words.

Given that my DD and other students have made similar statements about live/interactive instruction periodically, I think this may be a real thing that keeps students engaged in LIVE presentations that doesn't exist in recordings.

If they can't have live, then give them MythBusters.

I just wanted to share an alternative perspective from faculty at San Jose State, which covers a lot of my own concerns as a college professor in the social sciences.

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Document-Open-Letter-From/138937/

Much of the discussion here has focused on science and math classes so I wanted to add that these are not the only disciplines facing the "flip" dilemma. Dad22, I can appreciate your enthusiasm for the apparent flexibility the approach seems to make possible. However, I am very cynical about what these classrooms would look like in practice. I think the likely result is the further devaluing of the teaching profession (at the college level, flipped classrooms could easily result in online "professors" from afar and TAs in the classroom. Bye-bye faculty.) And yes this is a job preservation issue for faculty, but it is also about quality of education provided to students. It is also a broader social issue. Do we want a society in which the chosen elite get to have real professors and ask their questions in a face-to-face format and everyone else gets canned videos with ever less qualified teaching assistants? There are some deeper questions here that should be considered.

And as a social sciences professor, I must point out that the examples given here, as someone mentioned above, seem to be more about transferring information rather than teaching concepts and ideas. Can someone really learn about democracy, or social justice, or philosophy or racism or political theory from watching a lecture? When there are multiple perspectives on a subject that must be examined, interpreted, and critiqued, I don't see how this approach could result in independent, critical thinkers, which is the number one goal I have for my students. In fact, it seems antithetical to that goal. It leads students to believe that there is ONE right answer to a question and the answer to that question is whatever the authority figure in the video says it is. This teaches students to be followers not independent thinkers. Thesis, evidence, logical argument. Defend your position in a classroom full of students (and a knowledgeable free thinking instructor) who will challenge and question you and perhaps even bring a new idea or perspective to you that you had not thought of before. This classroom experience develops a learning community, as mentioned above, but it also develops students who not only come to the answers themselves, but who can also use evidence and logic effectively and communicate their ideas clearly. Granted, these things are often not happening in live classrooms, but I don't see how it could happen at all in the flipped classroom.

I think Val and Howler Karma have made some valid points on why this approach might be problematic for the sciences. I would like to suggest that there are some serious concerns here for society and civil discourse as well.

A flipped classroom replaces live lectures with videos. Here is an interesting defense of the lecture:

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2007/07/lectures-highly-effective-teaching.html

21 July 2007
Lectures - a highly effective teaching method

Editorial

Lectures are such an effective teaching method because they exploit evolved human psychology to improve learning
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 67: 1261-1265.

Summary
Lectures are probably the best teaching method for many students in many circumstances; especially for communicating conceptual knowledge, and where there is a significant knowledge gap between lecturer and audience. However, the lack of a convincing rationale has been a factor in under-estimating the importance of lectures, and there are many who advocate their replacement with written communications or electronic media. I suggest that lectures are so effective because they exploit the spontaneous human aptitude for learning from spoken (rather than written) information. Literacy is a recent cultural artefact, and for most of their evolutionary history humans communicated by direct speech. By contrast with speech, all communication technologies – whether reading a book or a computer monitor – are artificial and unnatural. Furthermore, learning is easier during formal, quiet, real-time social events. The structure of a lecture artificially manipulates human psychology to increase vigilance, focus attention, and generate authority for the lecturer – all of which make communications more memorable for the student. Instead of trying to phase-out lectures, we should strive to make them better by understanding that lectures are essentially formal, spoken, social events.

Hmmm. I wonder if there is any research to back that one up. It is an interesting hypothesis, but evolutionarily speaking, language is a more recent development than information acquisition via visual methods, when one stops to consider it.

Social, yes; though that means quite different things to different individuals, as any extreme extravert/introvert could explain.

I mean, anecdotally, it matches what I (and other teachers) have observed to be true; that it is hard to pay attention to anything which is non-interactive for very long, and that students-- in general-- have a hard time paying enough attention to more than a few minutes of video instruction. Research has shown that to be true, too, so it's more than just anecdote and instinct operating. (I posted several of those studies earlier in the thread.)

Oral communication is a different medium entirely, even if it is a lecture setting. It's an intriguing idea. I agree that it's social in a way, but I'm not sure that I agree with formal, quiet, and real-time being the "best" learning environment, if only because none of those is exactly nonsubjective terminology.

I think it probably has something to do with intrinsic motivation and how learning style preferences play into that student motivation. More young students are socially motivated than not, but learning shifts gradually away from that primary mode as students mature, too. College faculty in particular are in a position to watch autodidactism develop in real-time-- most students have to learn the supporting skills (executive, discriminating) to leverage it well, even if they have natural inclinations that direction.

One more thought-- I think that those who are wary of all of the buzz over "flipped" classrooms-- as a pedagogical innovation, I mean-- are so not because they don't see the benefits of moving the applications/exploration/innovation part of things into live instructional time, but because...

er, this isn't new. Effective teachers have always done that. Does nobody recall "assigned reading" in classes?? Break-out discussion groups and spokespersons to report to the class as a whole? Working problems IN class and then seeing the expert work the problem and discuss it?

I'm disturbed by the idea that the standard pedagogy is "sage-on-the-stage" in the first place, because I've seldom seen that in practice. I've been around a lot of educational environments from early childhood ed through post-graduate settings, so it perplexes me that I've not seen this supposed problem that flipping "solves."

Maybe this is more common in the fields which produce professional education faculty and researchers?? I'm seriously confused by that point, and I think that most of the skeptics are, too. We're left wondering-- who ARE these people and where they heck have THEY been that they have this skewed idea of what has been happening in my classroom/department/school, anyway??

It begs the question-- what IS new about this?? (Because the proponents keep using words like 'disruptive' and 'innovative' and 'revolutionary.')

Well. What is new, evidently, is that direct instruction is being eliminated because it is viewed as a simple transfusion of information from expert to learners.

That's simply incorrect for most subjects.

Using video lectures or tutorials as a supplement is fine, and probably good. It's fine to use a video tutorial as a means of learning a relatively simple task, or a variation on a skill that one already possesses.

Not so good for a de novo acquisition in a learning population which is mostly naive and immature. If that worked, the vast majority of kindergarteners would enter school KNOWING how to read thanks to public television and computer games. They don't.


ETA: I'm definitely laughing at wanting to use the 1.75X playback option. I've often wanted a "reset" or "skip" feature, myself.

The term "flipped classroom" is relatively recent, but a related idea, "programmed instruction", has been around for a long time (and was invented by BF Skinner). Quoting Wikipedia:

The Wikipedia article lists several programmed instruction textbooks, many teaching computer programming. Khan Academy, with its lectures and accompanying problems, where answering enough questions moves you to the next topic, could be considered programmed instruction, as could EPGY. Stanford professor Patrick Suppes has been working on EPGY-like systems since the 1960s, as documented at http://suppes-corpus.stanford.edu/browse.html?c=comped&d=1960 .

The idea of students working largely on their own, getting canned instruction (either printed or video) and getting automated feedback as they work problems, has been around for a long time. I don't know if it is unpopular because

(1) it does not work well for most students -- they need live instruction or feedback
(2) school administrators don't want some students getting much ahead of others
(3) automating instruction threatens teacher employment

I looked at a programmed algebra textbook. The snippets of exposition between problems, typically just a few lines, could frustrate students who want to see the big picture.

Well, point number 1 is why teachers aren't in favor of the current administrative fervor for it, at any rate.

I agree with Bostonian's post in its entirety. It can be good for autodidacts, assuming that the curriculum is current and high-quality (which I think that Val and I have shown is not always the case, in spite of assurances to the contrary).


It's pretty toxic for Socratic or top-down/big-picture learners, though. Far more so than I would ever have imagined without knowing my own child as a learner.

According to this paper, to which I do not have access, programmed instruction is unpopular for reasons (3) and maybe (2) but not (1).


The Programmed Instruction Era: When Effectiveness Mattered
by Michael Molenda
TechTrends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning, v52 n2 p52-58 Mar-Apr 2008
Abstract: Programmed instruction (PI) was devised to make the teaching-learning process more humane by making it more effective and customized to individual differences. B.F. Skinner's original prescription was modified by later innovators to incorporate more human interaction, social reinforcers and other forms of feedback, larger and more flexible chunks of instruction, and more attention to learner appeal. Although PI itself has receded from the spotlight, technologies derived from PI, such as programmed tutoring, Direct Instruction, and Personalized System of Instruction have compiled an impressive track record of success when compared to so-called conventional instruction, paving the way for computer-based instruction and distance learning. PI innovators developed methods of instruction that were amenable to objective examination, testing, and revision, welcoming empirical testing of their products and demanding it of others. Today, the PI legacy lives on, mainly in corporate and military training, where efficiency and effectiveness matter because savings in learning time and cost have direct bearing on the well-being of the organization. As public purse strings tighten, the day may come when learning time and learning costs are subjected to close accountability in public school and university education also.

The first two pages of the paper are at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11528-008-0136-y#page-1

Ahhh-- but see, Training =/= "education."

Yes, it works for some types of learning. But I'd also submit that the current version of it incorporates far LESS interactive feedback than human-based feedback mechanisms once did.

The part of the feedback loop which is important is time-dependent. I don't have the reference handy, but that is something that PI/online-learning proponents have touted as a reason to demonstrate that it works BETTER than "conventional" instruction. One problem is that they don't bother to tell what they mean by "conventional" instruction, and often when you dig into this research, the "conventional" methods look very little like moderate classroom practices.

Educational software may advance so that computers can read students' expressions in the way that good teachers do:

http://www.joannejacobs.com/2013/07/confused-your-computer-can-sense-it/
Confused? Your computer can sense it
JULY 15, 2013
BY Joanne Jacobs


Computers can play chess, drive cars, answer Jeopardy questions, and do lots of other complicated things better than humans can. In the long run I think they will teach many subjects better.

A summary and critique of much recent writing on MOOCs, by a skeptical professor, is at

http://gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/mooc-roundup/
MOOC roundup
Gas station without pumps (blog)
July 28, 2013

I’ve been collecting Massively Online Open Cours (MOOC) blog posts for a while now, with the intent of doing a careful response to each. There have gotten to be so many that I can’t do a careful response to each. At best, I’ll do a short summary or critique of each one. If the number of links here is overwhelming (as it was for me in writing this post), read the summaries to pick out a few that seem likely to be worth your time.

I was just reading over there the other day!

Another blog that frequently discusses pedagogy and MOOC theory/practice:

http://stevendkrause.com/

I love Steven's blog. This week's entry is of a similar vein-- a sort of current topics review.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/08/02/let-us-count-ways-books-and-moocs-are-alike-essay
Books Are MOOCs, Too
Inside Higher Education
August 2, 2013
By Bernard Fryshman

Books are MOOCs, too.

Shall we count the ways? Books are mobile, ubiquitous and comprehensive. A student devoting the requisite time and attention to a book will acquire as complete an understanding of the course material as from a MOOC. For the most part, books covering material in any course are readily available in libraries -- and where an older edition suffices (as it does for most courses) can be purchased at minimal cost.

Books are available throughout the world, and if we count the number of people who riffle through the pages of a new book (riffling being the equivalent of the tens of thousands of people who try a MOOC and drop it at once), books readily qualify the “massive” designation as well.

Students can, and have, mastered college courses studying alone from books, and the same will be true for MOOCs. More likely will be the use of MOOCs as supplementary and support material for a conventional course -- again, just like books. It also follows that the same kind of students who come to class unprepared, not having read the text, will probably come to class not having followed a MOOC.

In essence, MOOCs and books are part of a continuum. MOOCs aren’t a new technology as much as an improved technology. Just as a frame of reference, the excitement surrounding MOOCs resembles the hype that welcomed television as a teaching medium.

**************************************************

I agree with the author that books and MOOCs have many similarities, but access to information about books and curricula on the Internet can make a big difference. Twenty years ago I was a good math and physics student, but I had no idea what textbooks were used in college by physics and math majors (for example "Electricity and Magnetism" by Purcell and Calculus by Apostol). They are qualitatively different books from what I had studied. Students who have exhausted the offerings at their high school can get much information about what lies beyond.

Most recently (in the past 3 years), in local public high schools (in CA) where there are budget cuts and lack of funding for several programs, school managements adopted the "flipped classroom" model in order to cover as much academics as possible with the least number of teachers on their payroll. As you said, automating instruction threatens teacher employment, and in this case, actually helped when a lot of the teachers got laid off.