Assignment 2

Flipped Classroom: Success in Theory, Failure in Practice

The worst learning experience I have ever had. 

Education at the collegiate level is riddled with public lectures. A teacher in the front of an auditorium talking to hundreds of students straight from a PowerPoint. This format is the target of a large amount of criticism, ridiculing it as dissociating the teacher from the students and reducing the 'teaching' of the teachers to a text-to-speech robot reading from the slides. The critique of the norm has brought a wave of 'new' approaches to teaching, including the flipped classroom.

The concept of flipped classroom is built from the idea of introducing students to the content before class and utilizing the time that would have previously been for teaching to work with the content that was learned. Let's use one of my Biology classes as an example. Before coming to class, we were expected to learn the material from reading a text book. In general, this could have been from watching a video lectures or reading assigned content, but despite the form, we have to enter having a grasp on the material. When in class, we spent the time working in a group to solve questions by utilizing the material we learned. The teacher was there to help the students with this synthesizing process, answering questions and aiding us as we toiled over a dense worksheet for two hours.

The theory behind this process is to allow flexibility on the students' side in their learning. Students work better at different times, in different environments, and at different speeds. This removes the standardization of the learning process, allowing students a more controlled learning experience. The time in class is made to built off of what was learned on their own. The teacher can clarify misconceptions and aid the students as they put the knowledge to use in a monitored environment. This removes the struggles of trying to do homework on your own and hitting a roadblock. On top of this, the peer work that usually goes hand in hand with flipped classroom teaching allows for collaboration of knowledge where students flush each others understandings out. In theory, this sounds like a great idea...but it falls apart in application.

The first step balances the whole process on its head. Self-learning is something that not everyone can do. If you aren't motivated or don't have ideal working conditions, the whole process falls apart. Who do you go to with your content questions if your teacher has been reduced to a pre-recorded video? In the same Biology class I mentioned before, half of the students would come to class without the slightest idea of what the content was. Whether they didn't understand or they didn't have the motivation to sit and read through a boring text book, the end result was the same. Even if you did manage to trudge through all of the content, figured it out on your own, and came to class well-prepared, what if the people you are working with didn't? My class experience was reduced to me explaining the content to my group members as I completed the assigned material on my own. I took up both the responsibilities of teacher and student on top of doing an entire group's worth of work. The traditional teacher has been removed from the process, now only serving as a homework tutor, leaving the crumbling peer-to-peer structure on the shoulders of the minority.

This process may work in some situations, but it is much more catastrophic when it doesn't work. It creates huge gaps between students in the classroom. If people aren't self-learners, they are left behind. Those left behind only become a burden for others, isolating those students as ones you don't want to be grouped with. You can't ask for help in the learning process because you are your own teacher. There is no room for error.

The classroom style that worked best for me centers around a concrete teacher, not a textbook or video. I value interaction, a learning experience where I am being actively taught and can interact with the flow of information as I learn. I prefer small classroom settings, where the teacher can converse with the students and vice versa. I like a teacher who comes into class with a topic of discussion and forms their content dynamically around the questions of the students, not someone who teaches the information likes it's simply a list of ingredients. The first time I experienced a classroom like this was in high school. It was a History of Astronomy class, comprised of about twenty students. The teacher came to class everyday with just a couple of general ideas on the slides that were the groundwork for the discussion, not the entire lecture word for word. He discussed the content with us, not at us. It was the first time I felt excited to read the books that were assigned, the first time I actually enjoyed writing an essay for a class. Despite being a class far from the core curriculum, I still remember what I learned to this day. This experience shows that when you are put in a classroom style that resonates with you, you learn so much better. The flipped classroom style cannot provide the interaction that I found crucial to the learning process in that class. In practice, flipped classroom becomes "most children left behind".