The pillars of Flipped Learning
--Originally published at Trevis' Flipped Classroom
In this post I will try to explain my version of the pillars of Flipped Learning (please watch and LIKE my video). I will take the liberty to say "classroom" instead of "learning" hoping to get through the explanation without going deep into some details.
The idea of a Flipped Classroom (FC) sounds to me a bit like an apprenticeship. I see the following situations happening in a workshop:
The idea of a Flipped Classroom (FC) sounds to me a bit like an apprenticeship. I see the following situations happening in a workshop:
- An apprentice would ask questions based on a particular interest or need. The master would assign the apprentice a job which upon completion, would allow her to reach the answer. This might take one session, or maybe ten, but the master knows each apprentice learns at a different speed. If the apprentice struggles, the master would have to explore a different technique.
- A master has many apprentices, and he knows they are at different levels of mastery, so he would encourage team work to get apprentices learn from each other. This would give a very interesting dynamics to the workshop.
- Some other times, the master would see in the apprentice the potential to develop a certain skill, and again, design a job with which the apprentice would develop such skill maybe even without even noticing it.
- Sometimes, the master would ask the apprentice some help to solve a problem he doesn't even know the solution to: an open problem. The search for the solution would teach both, master and apprentice, a valuable lesson. But the master had the big picture and the experience to make the experience available to the apprentice
This ideas actually fit very well with the four pillars of flipped learning: Flexibility, Learning Culture, Intentional content, Proffessional Educator (Ok, I fixed it a little to make it fit). I believe that the questions must be formulated by students, however they may not have seen the big picture picture about something: they don't know that they have questions. Part of the goal of the FC is to get the students to confront their previous knowledge about a certain topic to help them formulate the questions. The flip doesn't necessarily mean to go home and read, and come to school to do the homework, the flip can happen all inside the classroom, and technology opens many doors to do this.
So, after examining a couple of documents about it and trying to explain what FC is and what it isn't I thought, once more, of a list... or rather two lists:
- FC is not a simple change or shift of schedule.
- FC is one of many tools designed to shift the focus of learning from teacher to student.
- FC is a chance to take advantage of current technological tools to engage students and multiply the number of learning channels.
- Designing tasks to develop FC is not an easy job.
- Undertaking or implementing FC is a challenge.
Well, I hope this sums it all up. If you don't agree or feel I need to change something, I encourage you to (politely and constructively) comment this post.
JP
