Flipping Out!

Before class today, Team! asked the class to review a narrated PowerPoint about flipping the classroom. They then started with an activity for the class to open our blogs and type a sentence or two about how we would define flipping the classroom. After about a minute, they asked us to pair up with another person to discuss what we wrote. Next, they asked the whole class to share.

Some of the things that came up:

• Takes the homework out of the home and puts it into the classroom. 
• Some disciplines may already be doing this, such as in literature. Students have to prepare for discussion and activities. 
• Some traditional faculty may feel that they have to sacrifice content coverage for "active" learning. 
• There may be a disconnect with some people regarding what the activities can be. 

The next activity was a small group discussion, with a member of Team! facilitating each small group's discussion. As I looked on, it appeared that everyone was participating and contributing to the conversation. There were four prompts: challenges, benefits, assessing the success of flipping, examples in different disciplines. Some ideas that came up...

• Getting students to do the work at home - there must be incentive.
• Students may be more likely to watch a video than do reading. Although, an actual assignment that will be handed in has a grade. Or they may "watch" the video at the same time they are doing other things. 
• It is important to continue to assign critical reading.
• This is not necessarily a revolutionary idea, just repackaged and branded.
• Flipping may not be appropriate for all topics.
• One example was for a research methods course - students work in groups to create a moderator's guide for a focus group. 
• Another example is a public speaking class - allowing more time in class to practice speaking. 

The final activity was back to blogging - we were told to respond to the original blog post with reactions and additional reflections.

Great job, Team!

Connections

Just read a post on Inside Higher Ed - Dangerous Curves - about students who staged a boycott of their class final...and all got As. At first I was intrigued by the outcome, but after reading the post, I was more interested in how the students organized themselves via social media. It really should come as no surprise, but since social media meant phone trees when I was a college student (yes, that makes me feel like an ancient human being), I am still in awe of the connections students have with one another today.

How can faculty help students use their connections to facilitate learning?

Teaching and Learning Conferences

Attending a teaching and learning conference is a great way to get excited about teaching, learn new teaching strategies, and meet others of like minds. I am fortunate to be registered for three teaching & learning conferences in the coming months: the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Annual Meeting, which I will attend online, the Virginia Tech Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy in Blacksburg, and the University System of Georgia Teaching and Learning Conference right here in Athens.

While there will be many great sessions to attend at each meeting, I most appreciate the networking opportunities at conferences. For the VT and USG meetings, that will be easy. I will be sharing meals and social activities with fellow attendees, participating in collaborative activities during sessions, and stopping for hallway conversations between events. I'll exchange business cards with new acquaintances and hugs with long-time friends.

Networking during an online meeting is a bit more challenging, and perhaps not as socially rewarding, but it is absolutely possible. Participating in online conversations during sessions, particularly via Twitter, has been an invaluable way of meeting others with similar interests and getting my name out there professionally as well. The best example of this in action was when I was invited to review chapters for a new book by a colleague who had been following me on Twitter. We had never met, but she knew my work and areas of expertise via my tweets. That was very rewarding.

Never been to a teaching and learning conference? I recommend registering for the USG meeting - it's an excellent opportunity, and only $35 for students! I hope to see you there.

Back to class

Every spring when it is time to step back into the EDHI9040 classroom, I am filled with a mix of emotions. Among others, I am excited about what I can share with my students and what they will teach me during the semester; I am nervous about class dynamics and logistics; and due to mixed reviews from former students, I am reluctant to include the blogging assignment. Usually, my excitement is sustained throughout the term, pre-class jitters subside, and my hesitation regarding blogging is replaced by confidence that it is a good assignment.

One of the goals of this course is for students to "reflect on the roles of instructional technology with respect to his or her personal teaching philosophy." While there are a number of ways to encourage this reflection, blogging makes the most sense for this course. Blogging gives everyone a personal space to think about the technologies we are studying and to share those ideas with others in the course. Blogging also gives participants an opportunity to practice an activity that might be appropriate for their own students and to understand the challenges and rewards of blogging. 

Over the next few weeks, I will provide prompts and ideas about the blogging activity. And this year, I am looking forward to it! 

Midterm

I've posted about midterm evaluations before, so I think I'll take this opportunity to link to a few resources that may be helpful as you think about whether or not to implement this strategy in your own classes.

Link to a previous post on this blog - March 2010

A post on the UGA CTL Blog - October 2010

Recent ProfHacker post on using Google Docs for evaluations (!) - February 2012

Do you ask your students for midterm feedback?

I just read a post on the ProfHacker blog about the challenges of teaching multiple sections of the same course. This is not something I've had to do in some time, but I can definitely relate to the issues raised. Dr. Hara makes a number of great suggestions for addressing things like varying class size and dynamics, but instructional technology does not seem to come up at all. I wonder what sorts of technologies might help? What do you think? Also, if you were in her shoes (maybe some of you are) and you were using a learning management system, would you combine the sections into one course space? Or would you keep them separate? What are the pros and cons of each option?

A GarGANTTuan Discovery

In a previous post, I noted how UGA was investigating learning management systems. Now that the investigation process is over, I am turning my attentions to planning and implementation of our new system, Desire2Learn. Fortunately, I have an awesome team to work with, and many of us have been through this before. That means we can improve on processes and project management, starting with communication. We plan to use Google tools, including Docs, Spreadsheets, and Blogger. We are still thinking about whether or not to use Sites as well, particularly for collaboration within the team.

We will use Docs and Spreadsheets  to outline the project plan, and Blogger to inform the UGA user community on the progress of the project. I am very excited (in a nerdy way) about a Google Gadget that I found. It's a Spreadsheets Gantt chart tool, which takes each item in our project plan and plots it on a timeline. Super cool, and pretty easy to use. Watch a future post for more info, but in the meanwhile, you can see an example.Thank you, Mr. Gantt!