Students taking over!

Recently I was introduced to the idea of a flipped classroom. The idea is an expansion of what I have been doing by limiting my lecturing and increasing the amount of time students spend working problems in class. The flipped classroom involves taking the teacher's instruction out of the classroom and placing it online outside of the classroom. Then classroom time is spent with students asking questions, working on problems, and would allow for expanded exploration. [Here is a nice presentation about what a flipped classroom is.]

So, how could this be used in the developmental math classes?

The first thing is to get "buy in" from the students. Some students may be resistant because they are used to the teacher telling them what to do (or what has been called the '"sage on the stage" model of education). Getting students who have signed up for an on campus class may be resistant to having to spend time online. Since I am already assigning online and paper homework I am used to this resistance. One thing that I have started doing is helping students individually getting signed in, and when possible having the class in the computer lab room.

Making sure that students are accessing the material could be difficult. There are always students who will not participate no matter how you 'incentivize' it. The main thing, as I see it, is starting the class with a warm up that comes straight from the online preparation material. Also, it is important to make the material entertaining and informative. Just throwing up worksheets is not going to work. The instructors that I have talked to that use this techniques record lectures, and I will need work on how to do it with online whiteboard software. Also, breaking up the lecture into smaller parts is recommended so that students can go back over the parts that they need to without having to go through the whole lecture.

The really exciting part of this, for me, is being able to expand what happens in the classroom. This has been where I have always struggled. There are so many interesting things that I wanted to do but had never figured out how to fit in. By answering student's questions at the beginning of class, there will be more time for collaborative projects during class. I have shown examples of arithmetic of worksheets in the prior two blogs. Another thing that would be great is having students develop FOIL and from that Special Products in introductory Algebra classes. There are so many resources out there, and being able to take those and expanding them for adult students will present new challenges.

I would love feedback from those who have already started using this methodology, and to discuss any concerns that people have.