Instead of flipping – maximize!

That was the title of a five-minute “lightning talk” by Amanda Dills at the 2015 POD Conference. An Instructional Technologist at Oklahoma City University, Amanda started with the premise that face-to-face classroom time is the most valuable commodity instructors have, and our goal should be to make the best possible use of it. The heart of her talk was an original three-part strategy for moving class time usage away from content delivery toward active learning.

Be wise: carefully determine what kinds of activities are most worthy of class time. Amanda had us take a BuzzFeed-style quiz to help start that process.

Digitize: use technology to move other activities out of class. Amanda suggested a few ways to do this and provided a more detailed list of 40 Ways to Digitize Instruction.  For me, this strategy was the takeaway for the session — it’s much more comprehensive than replacing lecture with videos (what flipping boils down to for many folks).

Maximize: the ideal results will be more effective class time with students and more free time for you.

Learn more about Amanda’s technique by reading What is Maximizing? at her new blog.

[image created at Imgflip]