In the latest post in his excellent series on teaching in a flipped classroom, Robert Talbert describes how recent experience has led to three important shifts in his thinking about pre-class and in-class work. Here I’ll simply quote Robert’s main points; his full post is well worth reading, backing up each point with illuminating details.
…Recently I had time to reflect on how I’m implementing flipped learning in my classes, and I noticed that some of my thoughts on flipped learning have evolved over the last few years, including some breaks from things I’ve written here on the blog. Here are three of those thoughts that stood out for me.
What I used to think: Pre-class activity in a flipped learning model is about mastering content-oriented instructional objectives.
What I think now: Pre-class activity is for generating questions …
What I used to think: Students in a flipped classroom need to have some graded measure of accountability when they arrive at class (an entrance quiz, etc.) to ensure that they do the pre-class work.
What I think now: Accountability doesn’t have to look like a quiz …
What I used to think: The in-class instruction in a flipped class should focus primarily on active student work with little to no lecture.
What I think now: The in-class instruction should focus on two things: Answering questions, and engaging students in high-level tasks – and lecture can play an important role in both …
