Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Flipped classrooms

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.