Flip It! Challenge
Problem of Practice: "What tools, systems, and procedures do you use to support a "flipped" mastery learning model in your classroom?"
This challenge seeks to build an NYC-area community of problem solvers who are tinkering with and sharing solutions around the systems, tools, and techniques needed to support the adoption of a flipped mastery model in our classrooms. The challenge space offers a series of optional resources, meetups, and discussions culminating in participation in a culminating "Flipped Systems Slam" in NYC in November of 2012.
Challenge Facilitators
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Challenge Sponsor
Overview
Problem of Practice: "What tools, systems, and procedures do you use to support a "flipped" mastery learning model in your classroom?"
This challenge seeks to build an NYC-area community of problem solvers who are tinkering with and sharing solutions around the systems, tools, and techniques needed to support adoption of elements of a flipped and/or individualized mastery model in our classrooms. The challenge space offers a series of optional resources, meetups, and discussions culminating in participation in a culminating "Flipped Systems Slam" in NYC in November of 2012.
Preview Action Steps
YouPD challenges provide an opt-in, collaborative model for adult learning that includes in-person and online opportunities to engage with an interested community of others in pursuit of a shared professional goal. Challenges typically culminate in the live and/or online presentation of a "hack," or solution to a problem of educational practice, that is shared back to the community.
The purpose of the Flip It! Challenge is to forge a community of teachers, coaches, and administrators from the NYC area interested in problem solving around what it takes to effectively incorporate a "flipped" or "flipped mastery" model of instruction into one's practice.
Target Audience
- Those interested in adopting some of the basic techniques of screencasting for use in blended learning environments.
- Those interested in exploring both "flipped" and "mastery" elements to the "flipped mastery" model. Because the transition to a mastery learning model requires a substantial shift of practice, it is not expected that all participants will adopt this in their initial experimentation with flipped models.
Objectives for Participants
- Develop a nuanced understanding of the various meanings of "Flipped Instruction," and develop a rationale for adoption of the elements of a flipped model that most support one's teaching context and pedagogical priorities.
- Understand and distinguish the meaning and practical challenges of "mastery learning" in comparison to the generic "flipped" model, and make an informed choice about whether adoption of a "flipped-mastery" approach makes sense in one's teaching context.
- Develop skill with the tools and techniques for creating, hosting, or distributing screencast presentations to students as a replacement for or supplement to in-class direct instruction.
- Adopt or develop a system for hosting, authoring, and curating online content for students.
- If using a mastery or self-paced approach, adopt or develop a system for assessing, tracking, and visualizing learner progress that is learner-facing and learner-centered in its design.
- Articulate what students and the teacher DO during their own bricks-and-mortar classtime that improves the learning impact over methods in which that same class time is used for direct instruction.
- Develop or adapt norms, protocols, and structures to help guide learners in productively engaging in the flipped classroom.
- Develop a network of people and resources to rely on for support in problem-solving around the challenges of this model.
Learning Activities / Tasks
- Google Group discussions.
- Optionally join into G+ Office Hours
- At least one additional Summer Blender will be announced for interested "Flipped" practioners.
- A culminating "Flip It! Systems Jam" in November in which you showcase all facets of your flipped model (in progress) in a short (7-10min) live presentation.
We've started a flippednyc Google Group to enable easier networking and communication amongst folks in the NYC area who share an interest in the adoption of a flipped instructional model. Discussions for this challenge will take place in the Google Group.
Submit your email address in the field below and one of the group administrators will review and approve your membership.
| Subscribe to flippednyc |
| Visit this group |
1. Create a professional Twitter account
Over the past two years, the Twitterverse of k12 education has become a place where professionals are increasingly creating Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) in which educator-bloggers, coaches, and resource mavens are engaging in a continuous, interest-driven exchange of fresh ideas, tools, and techniques. To grasp how Twitter can be used to create a PLN takes a bit of a suspension of disbelief by the uninitiated, so we urge newbies to spend some time this summer exploring and marinating in what it has to offer.
2. Join some hastag discussions
The #flipclass hashtag has grown up over the past year, alongside the larger #edchat community, to serve as a channel for those pursuing the flipped model. While the hashtag can be used any time for Tweets related to flipped instruction, the community currently convenes for "live" exchanges every Monday at 8PM EDT.
3. Check out the Flipped Class Ning
The flipped instruction community, as led by former teachers Jon Bergman and Aaron Sams, also uses a Ning, called "The Flipped Class Network" to share resources and screencasts around flipped instruction.
As with most practices defined by communities, a diversity of interpretations of flipped instruction have emerged from the field. In considering our own adoption of a 'flipped' model, let's activate and connect what we understand about flipped instruction by first probing the limits of the metaphor implied by the name.
Understanding a "flip" or "reversal" of an existing teaching model requires stating and examining our assumptions about what we think "traditional teaching" (i.e. the thing we're supposedly flipping) looks like, and more importantly what we believe effective teaching and learning ought to look like, whether it's called "flipped instruction" or not.
There's hopefully rich fodder for discussion here, as has been evinced by many roiling debates that have occurred throughout the PLNs on Twitter and in the k12 blogosphere.
Below are some great resources for formulating your response...for now, let's agree to the discussion prompt:
"What is being 'flipped' in the flipped model? Does this model align with what our experience as educators and research show effective teaching and learning look like?"
Post your response to the Google Group.
Please do your best to cite resources and build off each other's responses as we engage in this.
Suggested Resources
- Wikipedia - Flip Teaching
- Video - Mastery Learning that Works! - Aaron Sams and Jon Bergmann
- Excerpts from "Flip Your Classroom" book by Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams
- Jon Bergmann's Blog - Flipped Learning
- Salman Khan's 2011 Ted Talk
- Derek Bruff's disambiguation of the use of the term "Flipped Class"
- Five Best Practices for the Flipped Classroom by Edutopia blogger Andrew Miller
- "Disrupt This: My Challenge to Silicon Valley" from the blog of Frank Noschese
- "What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About Math Education Again and Again" from the blog of Dan Meyer
- Flipping the Classroom Requires More Than Video
- Knewton (for-profit adaptive learning technology company) Flipped Classroom Infographic
American public education is largely defined by a model in which batches of students, grouped by age, are moved through a common set of learning activities in a fixed amoung of time. While there is much tinkering around the edges, assessments in this system are functionally equivalent to ranking and sorting devices, in which a bell curve of results is the expected outcome gatekeeping and motivating (or de-motivating) learners with respect to a scarcity of known future opportunities, and semester calendars and annual exams are the drumbeat that drives a monolithic pace in the day-to-day of classrooms as educators struggle to differentiate feedback and supports. This temporal fixity is a fundamental design constraint in everything from electronic gradebooks to Student Information and Learning Management Systems.
Over the years and through the waves of reform, practioners have often posited: "What if mastery of learning objectives, rather than seat time, were the defining constant in the learner's progress through schooling?" Manifold interpretations of this "outcomes based" vision of schooling exist. Chief among the practical implications of such a model is the idea that learners should progress to the "next" learning objective only when they have demonstrated mastery in a criterion-referenced assessment. Envisioning this kind of a system requires unleashing the necessity for everything from State policy changes to new data and classroom systems to support differentiated pacing in student engagement with content and assessment.
While according to its leading practioners, a flipped classroom doesn't necessarily imply a mastery model for assessment and pacing, one can easily see how it might be harnessed to support such a model, and many of the leading flipped instructors do. In considering whether to adopt a "flipped mastery" model, let's engage in a discussion in the Google Group based on the following prompt:
"What happens when student mastery, rather than seat time, is the defining constant in the design of learning experiences? What are the core benefits and challenges, and how might we smartly navigate some of the systems challenges of asynchronous pacing?"
Suggested Resources
- Mastery Learning Wikipedia entry
- Mastery Learning that Works! Video by Jon Bergman and Aaron Sams
- Mastery Learning: Does it work? Robert B. Burns
- Lessons of Mastery Learning - Thomas R. Guskey
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