What 'flipping the classroom' boils down to it seems, is the creation of online content including videos that offsets the need for students to physically attend class. There are several vaunted examples of this. The Khan Academy videos have been hailed as a departure from 'boring old lectures', and I suppose the same could be said for the TED series of videos. Don't get me wrong, video has its place in education. I enjoy watching videos and I am often inspired by great speakers, and some of the video talks from Khan and TED are truly inspirational. But by any stretch of the imagination, just watching a video cannot be seen as a viable substitute for good learning, and should not be used to replace campus based education just for the sake of it. I used to jump all over lecturers who, when they had nothing better to speak about, decided to 'put on a video.' It made no sense then to simply cop out and fill time by showing a video, when a well considered discussion session on a thorny topic was much better at getting the synapses sparking.
Another objection to the flipped classroom is the digital divide. What happens to all those students who cannot afford or access the technology they need to participate in this kind of learning? And what about students who suffer from visual impairment? Have these been considered in the flipped classroom equation?
Do we seriously think that we can replace teaching with a video? Shouldn't we instead be concentrating on replacing bad lecturers? Far too often institutions buy into the latest shiny idea without enough thought about what the implications are for the student. With increased student tuition fees looming, more and more students are going to demand better quality tuition, more engaging lectures and richer learning experiences. If they don't get them, we can expect to see litigation, institutional black listing and plenty of students voting with their feet. Asking them to stay at home, watch a video and then do an assignment based on their own independent study isn't going to cut it.
According to the Wired magazine article, 'flipped teaching is essentially a type of tutoring. The difference is that new digital tools enable teachers to coach large classes: one-on-one tutoring, scaled by the web.' Oh yeah? Sounds like the old style distance education to me. What is not explained in Wired, is how on earth a tutor can conduct one-on-one tutorials (using any conceivable web tool yet created) to provide quality support for upwards of 160,000 students (this is the figure cited as the number of students enrolled on the 2011 Stanford University AI course run by Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun).
More important for discussion than economies of scale, is the quality of learning experienced by the learners in this so called 'flipped' learning environment. The most fundamental criticism of the flipped classroom model (argues the Innovative Educator website), is that it is based on the old instructional model of education - which we all know is no longer appropriate nor relevant in this digital age. All we are doing, under the guise of new technology is perpetuating previous errors on a grand scale.
Wired does report that to cope with such a massive programme as the Stanford course, online assignments were 'auto-graded'. This prompts serious questions about what exactly students are learning, and at what level of depth they are learning it. Exactly what is the added value of the 'Flipped Classroom' besides the fact that students don't need to leave their home town? It's quite telling that when 160,000 students enrolled on the Stanford programme, Thrun and Norvig decided to set up their own for-profit online college, which they called Udacity. It figures. There is obviously big bucks in the idea. No wonder they are so enthusiastic about the flipped classroom.
So besides making lots of money out of the idea, and having an article about you featuring in Wired magazine, what is the flipped classroom good for? What are we actually achieving by flipping the classroom? If it is, as Seth Godin suggests, to avoid the turgid ramblings of out of date professors, then I welcome the change. If on the other hand, all we are doing is giving distance education another name, then what is the point?
One very useful piece of information in the Wired article is the mention of the British Open University and their work around using online learning platforms such as Moodle to support their distance learners. Bearing in mind that these thousands of learners already exist, and it is expedient that they receive high quality resources and support from their remote tutors whilst studying at home and/or at work. Niall Sclater who is Director of Online Learning at the OU, is quoted as saying that students should be able to do an entire degree on an Android phone or iPhone (other brands are available). Niall is correct, but the OU has been supporting distance learners for a lot longer than Khan or Udacity, and it knows how to do it effectively. One of the first things anyone who contemplates offering technology supported learning needs to consider is that delivering resources to remote learners is only half the equation. You also need to support them. A lot.
I want to propose an alternative form of flipped classroom. If we are in the business of turning things on their heads, let's do it properly. Sending students off to watch a video doesn't cut it. To my mind, flipping the classroom is a lot less complicated than it is portrayed. We don't need to use hi-tech solutions to help us flip the classroom. If we want higher quality learning experiences, we simply flip traditional roles. Flipping learning for me means teachers becoming learners and students becoming teachers. I have already elaborated on this in a previous blog post. If teachers assume the role of a learner, and accept that they are not the fonts of all knowledge, but are there to facilitate learning instead of instructing, positive change in education would happen. Similarly, if we ask students to become teachers, and we encourage them to independently create their own content, share and present their work - either in the classroom, or on the web - we place them in a position where they must take responsibility to learn and develop their understanding of their subject. This is active, participatory learning. Students can aspire to become specialists in their chosen field, because in order to be able to teach, you first need to become intimate with your subject. We learn by teaching. Now that's flipping good.
Image by Sneebly
What the flip? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.
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