Flipped Learning: About Time

Flipped learning is about how to best use your class time. Based on your high school and college experience, most of you set through lectures that was followed by independent work time. You were probably assigned to do reading or to write a paper between classes. If like most students, you discovered that you did not understand the concept after leaving the class. Questions remain –Where is the teacher? How can you get help on your own?

Flipped learning alleviates this problem. Now consider this example. A teacher creates a video of his or her lecture. The teacher may also assign recall questions or require notes. Students complete this work before they come to class. Now the teacher has 45 minutes for higher order thinking skills such as application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The teacher is present while students work on these problems and is able to walk around and help them individually.

In addition, it is apparent to the teacher as to who did not prepare for class and who is confused by the concept. The teacher can now counsel, give immediate feedback, and clear up misconceptions before an assignment is turned in. The teacher can differentiate instruction at this point for both remediation and enhancement based on the student’s skill set and level of maturity.

KoolLearning can help teachers personalize the course content – whether remedial or enhancement – based on the students’ needs.

Benefits of Flipping and how KoolLearning can help

• Class time can be more hands on. Since the teacher is freed from lecturing during class, more time is available for labs, group activities, and other hands-on, active learning experiences.

KoolLearning helps teachers work on project-based activities by organizing the support, research, lab and concept materials together. Especially because the sources of these materials are from industry partners, standard references as well as public television and other free OER resources. Having a library of materials that support the project that can be tailored to student groups helps teachers customize the outcomes of the effort. Additionally, teachers can divide students into groups either based on interest or as a way to easily sequence the use of lab materials or participation in field trips.

• The teacher is more involved with assessing student comprehension. The teacher is available to question students’ understanding and monitor progress as students work instead of after they turn an assignment in for grading.

KoolLearning allows teachers to track the progress of students by tracking content usage as well as by monitoring assessment results. KoolLearning uniquely allows students to engage by asking questions which often illuminate the state of understanding as well. KoolLearning also presents reports of student assessment in different formats.

• The classroom becomes student-centered while the lecture format is teacher-centered: The teacher provides the information while the students listen. With flipped learning, the students are now actively engaged in a group practice session. The teacher now moves through the class helping individual students and addresses the group as a whole when he or she sees common problems.

KoolLearning can house a variety of content libraries ranging in comprehensiveness. Not only can you showcase the content of an entire course, you can also find targeted playlists that address common problems and common misconceptions. In both cases, KoolLearning allows content from multiple sources to be organized together so that topics such as History, Math, Science and Philosophy can be brought alive by different perspectives, priming the opportunity for rich discussion in the classroom.

• Flipped learning encourages collaboration. With flipped learning, students come together to practice. It is easier to problem-solve and collaborate in a more relaxed social and in-person environment. However, listening to a lecture and recording notes are necessary prerequisites to collaborative activities to level up understanding and to seed perspectives. But distractions during this time can make it difficult for the student to concentrate.

KoolLearning allows for students to work together in projects as part of a group. Homework assignments can also be differentiated for each group. Different groups watch different videos, do different assignments or review different concepts, and the teacher is able to see usage and mastery reports for each group. With KoolLearning, students can easily pause, review, and question the base content at his/her own pace ensuring that students come equipped for the discussion with the best possible understanding of the material.

• Flipped learning encourages differentiated learning. When students practice with the teacher present, the teacher can quickly recognize gaps and misconceptions. He or she can also make additional resources available to students in a variety of formats that the student may not be able to access at home. Students who need remediation can watch the lecture again or work directly with the teacher. Students who need enriched materials have more opportunities using school resources.

KoolLearning allows teachers to add content in multiple formats easily, or create derivative courses for students with special needs, all from the same base course, while keeping aligned with requisite standards of the institution.

• Flipped learning can be used with mastery learning and standards based grading. With the teacher and student interacting during the practice stage, the teacher can ensure that the student masters the concept before moving on. With mastery learning, students and teachers work together until a minimum level of mastery is achieved.

Through, KoolLearning, teachers are always aware of the progress made by students in mastering the concepts. It’s easy to add additional content to the course as the need arises and annotations made on existing content can help clarify concepts. Teachers can also can see whether students are reading the course content and whether they are answering questions. They can also access reports of their performance either by groups or individually. Several other report options are also available.

• Flipped learning can be used with self-paced learning. The teacher eventually creates a library of learning materials that students can access as needed.

Teachers can use KoolLearning to personalize the learning experience of each student or groups of students by curating and compiling a set of course content specifically for that student or group. The content can include websites, videos and topics from the open education resources.