Role Of Content In Flipped Classrooms

By Eric Lam

In a flipped classroom, students ‘attend’ the lesson outside of the classroom, typically in the form of teacher presentation videos or animated slide shows that can be viewed online, and in more sophisticated instances, followed by some diagnostic tests to indicate the progress of each student in the understanding of the material presented in that lesson.

The intent is for students to know enough of the topic (to be taught in class) and, having reflected adequately on the ideas they encountered at home, return to class with questions to clarify their understanding.

The benefits of a flipped classroom are progressively recognized and relatively well-documented (Fulton, 2012; Bergmann & Sams, 2013; Bergmann 2011; Ash, 2012). In its ideal state, a flipped classroom can transform the learning experience of students.

But this also means that students will need to commit close to two times the amount of time in official lessons for any given topic: once inside the classroom (lesson) and another at home watching the lesson presentation.

Why Flip?

Getting students to spend more time studying or learning can be a tall order, especially when faced with a topic that they do not see much need for knowing. Thus, unless a student is intrinsically motivated to explore the lesson material, it will be an uphill battle for the teacher to get them to do so without supervision.

Put simply and in the context of the flipped classroom, simply forcing students to view a lesson at home before a lesson in class, or rewarding those who do, just won’t work. Having the lesson fronted by a teacher who inspires the students may work for a while but may not be sustainable in the long term.

Critical Success Factors

We believe that drawing students into the flipped classroom environment will involve a series of carefully played-out activities in the following order

First, Interest them with ideas and concepts that are relevant to them — what is relevant to the student may often be highly irrelevant to the teacher.

Then, Challenge them to achieve competence in the use of these ideas.

Followed by Keeping them engaged with structures that constantly remind them of their competence and encourage them to flex these aspects of competence.

Flipped-Specific Content Considerations

We think that such out-of-classroom learning content should extend beyond instructional videos to include a delicate and clever concoction of interactive experiences that leverage on the affordances of currently available technologies.

Interactive content is not necessarily inquiry-promoting content — boasting several animations and interactive buttons for the user to click-and-explore does not mean that it is able to get students thinking deeply and posing questions to seek clarification for understanding, or to apply what is taught (in that piece of content) in new situations, beckoning further questions to fill the gap in understanding when applied in these new situations.

So, if interactivity (and technology) is not the key to making a piece of content inquiry-based, what is? We think that pedagogy and learning (action) psychology are two key elements that drive how content should be designed to maximize the value of the flipped classroom — content should be designed to weave around themes that students find relevant and useful will attract them to intellectually explore the ideas further; it should deliver a discrepant experience for students, eliciting an intrigued response that leads to questioning for understanding — students who are intrigued with such discrepant events in learning content will find the material so relevant that they could not wait to return to class to ask their teacher questions to clarify their understanding of what they encountered at home.

It is not about having fun while learning something; it is about being engaged while learning it.

As educators, we sometimes need to ask ourselves, ‘which has more learning value to the student: know why we should eat, or knowing what we should eat to look good?’

Post Source : http://www.edudemic.com/content-in-flipped-classrooms/

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