What began as a routine summer workshop on incorporating games and game-like elements into instruction, turned into a surprise for summer; two weeks of fun and intense online game-play from an engaged and committed cadre of faculty and staff who…
By: Nicole Webber and Stephanie Wiegand
A common practice at many colleges and universities involves course faculty inviting librarians into their classrooms to teach research and information literacy skills and concepts customized to disciplinary or course needs. Library instruction varies in format but often manifests in…
Recently, I worked with a research assistant to assess the efficacy of the use of smart phones and tablets in lectures. The study involved asking students to use their own devices to access an app. On the app, students could…
By: Anthony R. Sweat, PhD, and Kenneth Alford, PhD
“There’s just not enough time in class with students!” It’s a common faculty complaint and when students are provided quality course materials they can use outside of class, this blended learning approach gives faculty more time in class. There’s a…
In the previous two articles, I shared ideas to address student accountability and student preparation in the flipped classroom. Based on your feedback and emails, getting students to come to class prepared is an ongoing challenge for many of us! In this article, I’d like to keep the conversation going by zeroing in on the importance of the first five minutes of class.
In a flipped learning model of teaching, students get first contact with new ideas not during class time but in structured independent activities done prior to class time. This frees up class time to be used for more active work, digging more deeply into advanced ideas. This inversion of the use of time is a key difference between the flipped and traditional models of instruction—and when instructors flip, it brings up issues about time management for both instructors and students that require special attention.
Faculty everywhere are flipping their classes, but can we flip faculty development? That’s the question I asked myself when I flipped the pre-conference workshop at the 2016 Teaching Professor Technology Conference. What I discovered is that we can “practice what we teach” and design faculty-centered learning experiences much the same way we design student-centered learning experiences.
In this article, I provide a few recommendations for flipping a faculty development workshop. For further inspiration, the article concludes with a showcase of the work created by the participants in my workshop last fall.
A 2015 survey of Faculty Focus readers found that the number one barrier preventing faculty from implementing the flipped classroom model and other active learning experiences into their courses is TIME. Faculty reported they don’t have time to plan extra learner-centered activities, due to increasing responsibilities, and they don’t have time to implement the activities in class because there’s too much content to cover.
If you feel this way, you’re not alone. But, you can still create engaging learning experiences for students. And you can do it in 10 minutes (or less).
I keep worrying that we’re missing the boat with active learning. Here’s why. First, active learning isn’t about activity for the sake of activity. I fear we’ve gotten too fixated on the activity and aren’t as focused as we should be on the learning. We’re still obsessed with collecting teaching techniques—all those strategies, gimmicks, approaches, and things we can do to get students engaged. But what kind of engagement does the activity promote? Does it pique student interest, make them think, result in learning, and cultivate a desire to know more? Or is it more about keeping basically bored students busy?
What would happen if you were to arrive to your classroom, unplug the devices, turn off the projector, and step away from the PowerPoint slides … just for the day?
What would you and your students do in class?