SET Workshop

noteworthy problems exist when thinking about using the flipped classroom in higher education settings. If video lectures drive the instruction, it is just a repackaging of a more traditional model of didactic learning.  It is not a new paradigm nor pedagogy of learning. Educators need to be re-educated as to what to do with the class time that previously was used for their lectures.

This problem is especially relevant in higher education where faculty are hired based on their content expertise not their expertise in being facilitators of learning. There are many reasons professors who lecture don’t want to give it up. Tradition may be the mightiest force. A lot of them are not excited about the idea that they might have to move out of their comfort zone. Professors stick with traditional approaches because they don’t know much about alternatives. Few get training or coaching on how to teach. It’s kind of ironic that professors don’t have any type of training in any way, shape or form. It’s the only teaching degree that you don’t need to go through any actual training in teaching to do. (http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/lectures/inventing-new-college.html)

The tenets that drive The Experiential Flipped Classroom Model are: The learners need to be personally connected to the topic.  Student engagement is the key to learning.  This is more likely to occur through engaging experiential activities. Informal learning today is connected, instantaneous, and personalized.  Students should have similar experiences in their more formal learning environments. Almost all content-related knowledge can be found online through videos, podcasts, and online interactives, and is more often better conveyed through these media than by classroom teachers. Learning institutions are no longer the gatekeepers to information.  Anyone with connections to the internet has access to high level, credible content. Lectures in any form, face-to-face, videos, transcribed, or podcasts, should support learning not drive it nor be central to it. And from Doug Holton, “Lectures do still have a place and can be more effective if given in the right contexts, such as after (not before) students have explored something on their own (via a lab experience, simulation, game, field experience, analyzing cases, etc.) and developed their own questions and a ‘need to know.’” (http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/whats-the-problem-with-moocs/) A menu of learning acquisition and demonstration options should be provided throughout the learning cycle. The educator becomes a facilitator and tour guide of learning possibilities – offering these possibilities to the learners and then getting out of the way.