Flipped Learning Questions

Deanna Cullen | Fri, 08/15/2014 - 14:51

I am preparing to teach a "blended" chemistry course this fall and I admit that I am a little nervous. Students will be expected to access some of the course material outside of class. It will be very important that students preview materials and complete assignments. In recent years, it has become more and more difficult for me to feel confident that many of my students are spending enough valuable time preparing for class. There are many reasons for this, but the bottom line is that I am looking for advice from chemistry teachers that have experience using the flipped format. How can I assure that students will complete the work? There is one other teacher in my high school (of 600+ students) that is using a flipped format, so many of my students will have some experience with it. I know that teacher has struggled to get students and their parents to buy-in to the concept, but he has gotten some positive feedback after two years.

I did just read an article in the Journal of Chemical Education (part of the AP Special Issue) that has been helpful as I prepare for the course: D. Schultz, S. Duffield, S. Rasmussen, J. Wageman, Effects of the Flipped Classroom Model on Student Performance for Advanced Placement High School Chemistry Students.

Other chemistry teachers are asking for the same type of advice (see a recent inquiry), so I hope we will get a good response from our community!

Thanks!

Deanna

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Comments 5

flipped learning - student buy-in

I'd like to highly recommend a resource for getting student buy-in for any kind of active learning approach that relies on the students doing some work to prepare for class. I have used these 'first day questions' by Gary Smith for many semesters and feel they work well - http://www.ntlf.com/issues/v17n5/v17n5.pdf - is a link to an article in the National Teaching and Learning Forum. This approach gets students to think about what is most important to them in their education and then to commit to work to make it happen. It will require a bit of tweaking for high school, but only very minor changes.

Introductory Video

I've been flipping my IB Chemistry classes for a few years now. In general, a large majority of my students learned to really love the videos as a learning resource. However, I'm at a new school this fall so I recognize the need - as you did - to establish the method a bit and get the buy-in that leads to students activitely watching the videos.

I've done a few things this year a bit more deliberately than in previous years. First, I created an "introductory" video for students to watch. It's very short but gives them an overview of the process of watching the videos. I also spent time in class discussing the need to actively watch the video, rather than just passively push play and sit back. A normal 15-minute video should take a student longer to watch if she/he takes the time to work the example problems I provide and pause when necessary to write notes and do mental processing.

Last spring, I started using a Google Form to collect some formative assessment data about the videos - and student feedback as well. I'm continuing the process this fall with a few changes.

I'll work on a blog post about this to give a bit more detail than a simple comment here.

Enjoy the process. It's a ton of fun!

Flipped learning

You may be interested in our blog post Implementing the flipped classroom. Michael Seery has been looking into flipped teaching - teachers have described their own experiences and advice in the comments.

Make watching podcast an active lesson

I've been doing some flipping for several years mostly in Honors Chem and more recently in AP chem. I've learned how to make the podcasts bite size and I found that most students liked learning this way and having the podcasts available to rewatch was very useful to many students and certainly useful in absences. I still had some students that would either not watch the videos or not give them the mental attention required for understanding.

I was able to tackle this issue last year by implementing 2 changes 1) I now use EdPuzzle which allows me to question students along the way and 2) I changed my notes from fill in the blank to asking questions and having students relate the question to what was discussed in the podcast. EdPuzzle is amazing because it allows me to not only embed questions but it prevents students from skipping and it forces them to respond to an answer in order to continue. The last question I ask in each podcast is "what questions do you have that were not answered in this video?" I would then check this list before class and either address the questions as a class or individually with the student as appropriate. I would also look at the responses to the embedded questions and address those that were commonly wrong. I also would look at the data EdPuzzle provided to see who wasn't watching the videos and talk individually with those students. In some cases I would spot check students notes to see who was answering the questions I posed.

I found that it was important to stay on top of this diligently during the first few weeks of school in order to make sure my expectations were clear but as the year progressed I had to do less "checking"

Sounds like a "Pick" submission

Hi Brenda! Thanks for the suggestion. I would like to encourage you to submit a "pick" about EdPuzzle to highlight for our readers. I would love to see an example of how you use it! If you are willing, just go to the ChemEd X home page and you should see a block that includes a line "Contribute to ChemEd X". Provide a quick description of what you would like to contribute and we will be in touch ASAP!