Cricket makes a great point-- but I have to wonder if the reason why it is preferable isn't ultimately more of a band-aid approach to the underlying problem of placement in a course which is really slightly beneath that ideal proximal zone of development.
Because I can definitely recall DD preferring this sort of thing when her chief goal was to get through the class assignments as efficiently as possible, if that makes sense.
Why waste time doing both the reading, attending class, writing up notes, etc. etc. if you *could* get an A by just watching the videos and acing assessments, right? (Which, to be clear, she did do in a few of her high school classes).
Also-- flipped pedagogy has ALWAYS been a thing in STEM coursework. We just didn't call it by the trendy moniker, and we had more realistic expectations that no, NOT all students were going to be doing the reading before coming to class-- therefore, you couldn't take it to such extremes that you left kids in the dust if they weren't well-prepared.
Besides, the average student STILL needed the second mode of hearing it from an expert teacher during in-class time prior to using the material in applications to solidify and consolidate learning.
But that is always what my classrooms looked like. About 30-40% "content delivery" and about 60-70% students working with that material to cement understanding.
Also-- inquiry-based lab exercises are a thing now, which is also extremely trendy. Problem is, most students are not really well positioned to LEARN much from them. It becomes a matter of them finding the right protocol on the web, or cajoling it from someone who got an A in the class previously or something.
I really do not like that student-derived lab thing. I know it's very popular in higher ed, too, but it's really not well suited to lower-division post-secondary students, even-- there is simply too much that they need to SEE/experience and too little time to do it in to permit that kind of 'exploratory' stuff in most classes.
I mean, it's a great idea-- just not at the expense of other learning that takes place with more conventional expertly-written lab exercises, and thoughtful questions in write-ups.
Last edited by HowlerKarma; 12/14/16 12:37 PM.
