The flipped classroom has been in the news a lot lately. This is when you have students prepare for an interactive classroom experience by getting the lecture online before class. This idea stems from the understanding that lecturing isn't a great way to teach nor is it a very good use of classroom time. With the rise of tools like Tegrity for lecture capture and the ease of course management systems, putting the lecture online is becoming more and more popular for hybrid and traditional instruction.
In a great article titled Rethinking the Way College Students are Taught by Emily Hanford, on instructor goes a step beyond simply flipping the classroom. He engages the students in teaching each other by tying the preparatory reading (or lecture) with student generated areas of confusion. He then uses those points of confusion as the basis for peer instruction, where the students help each other understand the confusing topics.
I spoke last week at the Tegrity Conference on the future of lecture capture. One of the questions that came up in my presentation was, if we don't spend our time in the classroom lecturing, students will feel cheated, like the teacher isn't doing their job. Well, my response was that the teacher needed to be engaged, not just sitting sipping a latte and reading a magazine while the students were in conversation. This is a great model for that engagement.
It is also a great model for hybrid instruction and the overarching challenging of tying together the online with the face to face instruction.
I'm struggling, though, to think of applications of this idea for the fully online classroom, which is generally asynchronous and thus slower moving. While this can and does happen in a discussion forum, it doesn't seem like it would be quite as dynamic as what is described in the article.
What do you guys think? How might you implement dynamic peer instruction in the fully online classroom? Have you tried this in your hybrid or face to face classes? How has it worked?
Reference:
Rethinking the Way College Students are Taught by Emily Hanford
This is a great question, and one I'd love to discuss :)
ReplyDeleteOn a related note, I'm ponder how to (1) create meaningful community amongst the students online and (2) how to get to the point where I'd feel comfortable writing a letter of recommendation for an online student.
For the first the question is how to get them to really engage with other people as people, and not just as streams of text (streams of messages). In an Active Learning classroom you get that "for free" because they'll chat, joke, and share personal stuff as they're discussing how to solve the given problem(s). Online it take so much effort to send (text, typed-out) messages that most people skip the informal, community-building stuff (not to mention the ever-present risk of being mis-heard).
For the second: I only recommend students who pass through two filters: technically able, and good people to work with. Online I don't see anything about the second, and it's always possible that the first is actually being faked. So I'm kinda feeling lost when it comes to figuring out how to recommend people who I only ever see online.
Given the above I'm starting to lean in the direction of some sort of synchronous online interaction. Video conferencing (Skype, Google+ chat, etc) is becoming cheap & common, as one example. I don't think that everything should be made synchronous, but it's definitely worth thinking about.
To create dynamic online peer instruction use small peer review teams to increase student-to-student interaction opportunities. Review Teams can remain intact all quarter building long-term relationships or can be rotated each assignment to increase diversity and exposure to classmates.
ReplyDeleteExample: Use a discussion forum where students can post a rough draft of their assignment. With their draft posting each student leaves a note asking their review team to look for items within their draft that they struggled with (i.e. formatting, content, grammar, accuracy etc.); basically whatever the student feels like they need the most help with. The review team then looks at the draft posted by their classmate and offers constructive comments in the areas requested and the reviewer might also add additional comments. Each student has the opportunity to have their work reviewed and to review work done by classmates. In this way they learn from each other and can compare their work to their peers. I find that having students review each other’s work helps them to grow in their own confidence and helps keep their expectations realistic.
For dynamic hybrid/blended learning peer instruction (based on a flipped classroom model)...use a group/in-class exercise to increase student-to-student interaction opportunities.
Example: Have students prepare for class by reviewing the online lecture materials and completing their reading. When the class meets use an “Ask Someone Who Knows” exercise. To do this, create a handout with content related / module specific questions. I like to create mine in WORD using a table format with one question per cell and space to write the answer. Each student gets a handout and is asked to go around the room and find someone in the class that knows the answer. I put a limit on how many questions each student may answer. Depending on the size of the class and the number of questions, it typically ranges from 1-2 questions per student which makes them seek out multiple classmates, not just the ones they usually sit by. I also tell them they cannot ask me (the instructor) any questions or that I will answer only one question for the entire class, but they have to decide as a group, which question to ask me which encourages them to find as many answers as possible on their own. I do however direct students to where to find the information they need to answer questions themselves. I typically have the lectures materials (PowerPoints) and any lecture recordings available while the exercise is in progress. When the handout is completed we go over it together as a class to review and to recap what we learned. My students really love this exercise and so do I.
This exercise accomplishes several things:
1. Students are forced out of their chairs into an interactive environment where they have to seek the expertise of classmates and to share their own expertise/knowledge/interpretation of the content.
2. They learn to work as a group and often debate answers before a final answer is reached.
3. They become experts at locating course materials for future reference.
4. They build their vocabulary and knowledge base by talking about and sharing ideas.
5. They have completed review sheets to study from for upcoming assignments, quizzes and exams and have possibly connected with a classmate(s) that might want to study with them.
:) Alissa