Flipping My Classroom

Academic media is atwitter with discussions about ‘flipped’ classrooms. Most of my students, of course, have never heard of it. I was not immediately crazy about the idea. I like my lectures. My students tell me they like my lectures. What would teaching be if I gave up on lectures? Of course that is a gross misunderstanding of the flipped classroom. The lecture is still there. And, in fact, it has a more active role than it might in a traditional course. For the next few weeks I am going to write about my first attempt at “flipping” a class. My department offers Classical Mythology twice in the summer semester. I complete the first of those courses on Thursday. The second, which begins Tuesday, is a hybrid (half online, half in person). This hybrid course will also be flipped. Below I’ll outline what I mean.

1. Lectures for the course are posted online.
2. Because my students are unlikely to sit and watch an hour long recorded lecture, lectures have also been carved up into mini-lectures (10-15 minutes; many are shorter).
3. Class time will be devoted instead to working back over the lecture material, and, most importantly in a class based on the reading and analysis of ancient texts, on the working through of those same texts.
4. Assessments will live both online (discussion boards/blogs/journals) and in class (quizzes).

I’ll post parts of my syllabus this weekend as I gear up toward getting this new, hybrid myth off the ground.

~Sparrow

A good link: http://flipped-learning.com/