Need More Time? Flip the Class
Educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom believed that given enough time (and quality instruction) all learners could achieve mastery in a subject area. Therefore, learning becomes the fixed variable while time becomes the random variable, which Khan Academy founder Sal Khan talks about in this video.
As Khan notes, traditional educational environments have the variables swapped with time as the fixed and learning as the random variable. That is not what we want. Of course, classes and courses are organized around the logistics and constraints of time so it is not something that is easy for any one instructor to change.
Inverted or flipped learning is an instructional strategy that attempts to impact positively on the variable of time. In a flipped lesson or class, regular class time is made more available for deeper topic discussion or practice and feedback or questions and answers between instructor and learners. The typical lecture-based approach that would normally fill that class time is moved to before the class and often involves the use of technology (e.g., watching video lectures prior to class) or something a little less low-tech (e.g., reading a chapter in a text book). That is, learners do the content overview outside of class so that they have more time to play around with the concepts during class.
In effect, the typical class content gets moved out of class time and the homework, which would normally have been done after and outside of class, gets moved into class time. This may also be a better use of the instructor’s expertise. Instead of relaying basic facts, the instructor can help clear up misunderstandings and provide feedback to learners as they practice with the topic.
Neuroscientist Dr. Efrat Furst presents a model for learning that involves first knowing and understanding the topic before using and mastering it. Knowing and understanding involves making meaning. The knowing and understanding for the most part could be the goal of the pre-class work that learners do. And the assessment that occurs between that work and the class starting could aid the instructor in understanding more about the learners’ understanding of the topic. Using and mastering the content involves practice and this is the sort of thing that could now be worked on during class when the lesson is flipped. Dr. Furst recommends retrieval practice because of what is known as the Testing Effect — testing enhances long-term memory performance for content compared with rehearsal (e.g., re-reading the material over and over as a means of learning it).
Testing of course has a number of negative side effects, namely the stress and pressure of getting marked. Retrieval practice, taps into the best features of testing by making the tests low- or no-stakes. This is what could make them such a useful piece of the in-class portion of a flipped lesson. And the exit assessment conducted at the end of class is yet another formative measurement of the learners’ progress to that point.
The post-class component then becomes a further opportunity for learners to practice on their own — self-directed learning with error detection and correction — which is a nice progressive step from instructor directed feedback. Or it could represent some form of summative measurement where learners are awarded a mark or grade for what they have accomplished with the content.
Of course, flipping a lesson or class is far from easy if you or your learners have never even engaged in more active learning methods. That then becomes a good place to start. Instead of flipping the class or the lesson, work to embed a couple or a few active learning segments within your traditional class set-up. And then progress to pre-loading learners with some content prior to class. Baby steps are often best when flipping a class.
