I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that my experience this semester was unique. I converted my Computer Organization course to a flipped classroom using Team-Based Learning (TBL), while also taking a Physics class that was taught in a flipped style. As such, I got to experience both sides of the flipped classroom model at the same time. (Confession: They do it better, but hopefully just because they’ve had more practice.)
This was the first time I taught Computer Organization as a TBL course. To help students prepare for each module, I gave reading assignments along with a guide of questions to discuss beforehand. The discussion never quite emerged to be as interactive as I would have liked, but the students did complete the readings and were in a good position to start the modules. Overall, I am quite pleased with the results and feel confident that those who completed the course took a lot from it. However, my Physics experience tells me that there I still made their lives a lot harder than may have been necessary.
In the Physics class, we were assigned 3-5 videos to watch before every class, each video ranging from 3 to 12 minutes (5-6 was typically). Generally, the total time commitment was less than 20 minutes. The videos were critical to the success of the class. They brought the equations to life, illustrating the manifestation of the concepts rather than just the calculations. (Granted, not all videos were created equal. Some videos, particularly those that were 10-minute mathematical derivations, were less enlightening.)
There were times where I used videos in my course, to great success and relief from the students. Yes, they’re a lot of work (I estimate 8 hours for each 15 minutes of video). But you can get a lot of reuse out of them, particularly if they’re not closely bound to a particular programming language or architecture. I plan on reusing some of these for my Operating Systems course this fall and for some other courses.
But I can hear the collective voice of faculty everywhere: What about the textbook? Why can’t they just read that? Shouldn’t it be a learning objective that they develop their skills reading technical sources?
Absolutely. I very much believe that they need to learn how to read source material. However, I don’t think this can be accomplished by edict. Rather, I believe we need to make this skill a more explicit learning objective and provide scaffolding to support it. Videos can serve that role. They should not be perceived as a replacement for the textbook. Rather, the emphasis should be that videos illustrate main concepts while the text provides the details.
It’s incredibly tempting to think that reading guides can serve this role. Provide them with a list of questions that they need to answer as they read, possibly with some hints about what major points to think about. The problem with reading guides is that they are using the same language as the text: words and concepts the students don’t yet understand. And frankly, my view is this: If the students aren’t reading the textbook, are they really going to read your guide in a meaningful way?
I’m going to audaciously suggest that we in the active learning community underestimate the importance of source material supports. When flipping the classroom, we focus on changing our in-class activities, homework, and projects. That is, we put all of our work into refining the things that we and our students will do. We do not put nearly enough thought into what resources our students will use.
So, if you are thinking about flipping your course, you need to re-evaluate your relationship with textbooks and other source material. You will probably find that you need to provide additional support in the form of videos. Yes, they’re a LOT of work. But they really help the students progress. And it’s okay if they suck. I’ve produced some pretty bad videos in the past, and the students still loved them.
Bridging the digital divide 