Further to my post about my plans to flip my classroom, I read with interest a recent Business Week article which mentioned that professors at Wharton Business School are using their online course materials to flip their face-to-face MBA classes. The article is primarily about Wharton making available for free some first year courses as MOOCs (massive open online courses).
Wayland
I always thought there was a huge communication gap between what’s in these elaborate legalistic syllabi and what students actually get out of them. Here’s a diagram that only a professor would laugh at. 🙂
Wayland
It’s on the syllabus, right between the lyrics for the official college song and the dean’s sugar cookie recipe.
In a few weeks, I am going to “flip” one of my classrooms. It will not involve any heavy lifting of furniture, but it will involve turning my students’ learning experience upside down.
In a traditional classroom, the teacher/professor teaches the course material in the classroom. Students are then expected to digest that material and apply it in homework activities, assignments and tests. In a flipped classroom, the learning of course material occurs before the class even starts. Students on their own use online resources such as video lectures to learn the material. By the time they arrive in the classroom, they are ready to try to apply that material in class discussions or exercises.
I first heard about the flipped classroom on the radio while driving in my car last week. Spark on CBC Radio One had a fascinating show focused on learning and education. Apart from the flipped classroom, the show also examined “laptop distractibility” which I will talk about in a future blog post.
I will try the flipped classroom with one of my sections of a business law course that I am teaching this semester. I will provide my students in that class with online access to two sets of video lectures on contract law. Each set consists of 4 or 5 video lectures of about 10 to 15 minutes in length. Luckily, I happen to already have those video lectures which I recently prepared for an online course that I design and teach. These video lectures are animated powerpoint slideshows with audio narration.
I will need to stress to my students the importance of preparing for each class by watching the assigned video lectures. The obvious risk is that some (or many) of my students may not do that preparation. In class, I will apply case method teaching techniques (see my previous post) to engage students in discussions of case problems.
I will experiment with this for two classes in a few weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Wayland
Related articles
I will be trying a couple of more new things this school year. One of them can be said to be “new tech” and the other can be called “old school”.
The New Tech Idea: Socrative
Ironically, my new tech idea is named after a very ancient Greek philosopher. I stumbled upon Socrative (socrative.com) during the last Christmas holidays. It is a free online tool to get instant feedback from students in the classroom. The instructor poses a question (multiple choice, true/false, or short answer) to students, and the students input their answers via Socrative using their laptops, smartphones, or tablets.
Then, the results are tabulated in bar graph form as so:
When I first saw Socrative, it reminded me of the “ask the audience” lifeline in the game show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.
I used Socrative last winter on a limited basis in two of my classes. It was helpful in giving me real time feedback on how well my students were understanding the material being covered in class. For my students, I believe it made their classroom experience more of an active learning process. An extra plus is that Socrative keeps students’ electronic devices busy with class-related activities, instead texting, tweeting, etc.
If you have ever used iClickers, Socrative is very similar except with minimal set up time and without the bulky, expensive hardware. Did I already mention that Socrative is FREE!
The Old School Idea: Case Method
I love old school ideas, especially if they work. I want my students to learn how to “think”, instead of just memorize. Memorization may last a semester, but thinking skills may last a lifetime. The case method of teaching challenges students to think in creative and disciplined ways.
The case method was made famous by Harvard Business School and – here in Canada – by the Richard Ivey School of Business. A few months ago, I attended an excellent workshop on case method teaching conducted by Professors James Erskine and Michiel Leenders from Ivey. They impressed upon me the importance of planning and preparation in applying the case method properly.
This semester, I will try the case method in a few of my business law classes. Since the focus of my course is on legal analysis of case problems instead of developing business strategy for business cases, I will need to modify the case method somewhat. As well, it is a bit of a challenge to teach using the case method in a course that was not designed with case method in mind. For example, ideally, the assessment structure of a course should reward students for their participation in class discussions of cases. Wish me luck!
Wayland
As an educator, fall always feels like spring to me. It is a time of new beginnings, renewal, optimism and endless possibilities. Every new semester is a clean slate with new students and new challenges – even if it is a course I have taught dozens of times before. This fall and winter semesters, I am going to try a few new things to engage my students. Here are a couple of them:
1. Use Twitter in the classroom – It is always a challenge to stimulate discussion in class that involves as many students as possible. Speaking in a classroom in front of others does not come naturally or is downright scary for many people – especially introverts (like me). Why not have students communicate using a medium that they are comfortable with? I am inspired by this video of a history professor at the University of Texas using Twitter to engage more of her students in classroom discussion.
An extra benefit – students will be using their smartphones for tweeting instead of texting in class. 🙂
2. Create crossword puzzles – Giving review questions to students is a tool to help them learn material before or after a lecture. How about getting students to do these questions during class to create more active learning? I will be giving my students a crossword puzzle at the beginning of some classes. I am creating the puzzles by converting review questions into crossword clues. There are many online crossword puzzle generators. A good free one that I found is at The Teacher’s Corner. It took me all of half an hour to reword the questions into clues, input the clues and answers, and – presto – a crossword puzzle was generated. Here’s what my first puzzle looks like:
My next blog will be Part 2 – a few more new things I will be trying.
Wayland
Welcome to my new blog! As a college professor, I am always thinking of ways of helping my students learn and succeed. How can I get my students more engaged? How can I get them actively learning in my classroom? How can I develop their creativity and problem solving skills? These are challenges all educators face. Through this blog, I will share my thoughts and experiences in facing these challenges.
Wayland
I'm Wayland Chau and welcome to The Reflective Prof! I hope to share my thoughts and insights on teaching undergraduate students. I am a professor of business law at the Pilon School of Business at Sheridan College. Most of my students are in the Bachelor of Business Administration degree program. I strive to facilitate active learning experiences for my students, using both new online technologies and traditional methods.
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