I found myself learning more from this interview, which made me feel open-minded whereas in the last interview, I felt defensive.
Dr. Lapeyrouse presents her methods so well, I listened to some parts two or three times. She said that the learning happens in the asynchronous part (basically) and the part where people come together is where it crystalizes (I'm paraphrasing in order to understand, see "Learning by Summarizing" below). I really appreciated her alternatives to simply recording a lecture or instructional segment, because I'm tearing my hair out trying to get around the difficulties of asynchronous at those points where I used to rely on synchronous contact. I really identify with her about all the little details she initially wanted to include (I have so many of those that nobody's going to notice -- my shirt, for instance, changes color according to the color-coded topics of the course. Zero people notice this -- if they did they wouldn't care, and I don't blame them)
I think I can do something like what she's doing in H5P
I'm so relieved after hearing this interview. Dr. Lapeyrouse has made me infinitely more receptive to the ideas of Active Learning than I was before, though I can't precisely say why. I think because I can see what she means as she talks, and it's totally convincing. I can't wait to do stuff like this in my courses.
She talks about moving responsibility from the instructor to the student, which seems like a tall order, but I'm not skeptical at the moment... she says don't make a video without having the learning outcomes right next to you (I'm paraphrasing) she says she has a script, which has never worked for me, but I COULD have a PLAN. She says we need to be under 10 minutes but if it's not a "lecture"-type video, it can be more than that (referring to documentaries, and interviews like the one she's giving).
The in-class stuff was interesting, I'm just _emerald_ with jealousy toward those who get to teach synchronously, so my notes are:
. - . - Tell the room you don't want them to be silent
. - . - Use worksheets (built aorund learning objectives)
. - . - Provide those objectives to the students, tell them that's their study guide
. - . - Provide a few prompts that ask students to ID the learning objective each exercise covers
. - . - Flip the END parts of the course first. Best for last.
. - . - Bring in case-studies at key points
This took me forever to read through, because it's so valuable. The wealth of citations made it intimidating, but I'm not complaining. They say, "A total of 1621 articles from different databases were extracted; however, only 195 articles were found to meet our inclusion criteria:" -- these people are taking no prisoners.
Is there any reason I shouldn't use that first horizontal table as a cheat-sheet going forward? I mean, I'll download all those and look at them if I need them, but at least this cheat-sheet provides a list of sources I might one day need.
In the article itself, I found some of the support I needed when ranting about Active Learning above:
"However, previous reviews on flipped classroom effectiveness and utilization in higher education (e.g., Bishop and Verleger 2013; DeLozier and Rhodes 2017; O'Flaherty and Phillips 2015) offer a limited depth of evidence regarding the opportunities (e.g offering time flexibility, interacting collaboratively with peers, engaging in higher-order cognition, etc.) of flipped classroom in stimulating certain learning outcomes."
-- I would say that the evidence about the value of active learning is equally suspicious, and for similar reasons, but that's me. Excited by the prospect of better questions in the study of flipped classrooms, I read on to find, "What is the effect of using flipped classroom on students' learning across university disciplines?' 'What are the opportunities and challenges from using the flipped classroom model in thes disciplines?',and 'What are the major extensions to the traditional flipped classroom model?'" which don't feel helpful to me, because I'm stuck with flipped classrooms whatever effect they might be having, just like I'm stuck with a lot of other stupid crap in this ridiculous world.
Re: student preparation. Student preparation before class even starts would be great, I've never attempted it in a flipped classroom outside of a global crisis, but last time I did I assigned Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for a class on Character Creation and Development, which they either read or pretended to read. Both were fine with me, I just wanted them to know we were going to talk about it.
The authors say "The pedagogical challenge of using this method in teaching math was related to the lack of focused activities, so that students can successfully accomplish their learning in practice." In the arts, apparently, it's harder to know whether it's effective or not. I mean, it has a much more open-ended and circular way of saying that, but that's what it says. The conclusion helps ground it out more, and provided this, which I think is the most interesting point and I'd like to find a way to make my classes explore this -- "The flipped classroom was also found to help students to transfer their knowledge between contexts, thus strengthen their conceptual understanding."
They cite "students' lack of motivation because of deficiencies in social interaction" as a drawback of distance learning, which seems like a point where studies don't always find the same thing. I can't tell whether there's any consensus (anywhere really, but there in particular). Most of the rest of the article was illuminating, especially about instructor-side reasons for the failure of such classes (when they fail) and the most intriguing was "insensitivity to the change in their roles." Ohhh boy is this ever true. Other things like "lack of preparation" are problems we don't cause, but whatever, why WOULDN'T I be able to design a course for 140 students in one week? The response might be that I was provided beforehand with a shell yadda yadda, and... sure. The shell. I remember that. Thanks... for the shell.
I lol'd when the authors referred to things like "computer networks", kind of like saying "a TV game machine, for children's videographic entertainment cartiridges" -- oh granpa, you're just too much.
The point of 'Learning by Summarizing' was not as obvious, in its effects, as I initially thought.
Page 5 of the reading talks about the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, and says "summarizing serves to prime the cognitive processes of selecting, organizing, and integrating," which I could not have predicted, and describes organizing as "constructing a concise representation of the selected material by relating the elements of information to each other." -- This provides me with what I'm always seeking, a way to get a specific result out of students without directly asking them for it. In other words, to avoid having to ask them to "Relate individual concepts to each other in an organzied reflection" I can just ask them to summarize. Here's the problem I find... I teach asynchronously, and the automatic cognitive processes we're highlighting here take place when a student is responding in person, but those same processes are undermined, in my experience, by the act of writing, because that seems more like a quiz, and the students second-guess my purpose in posing the question to them, and it all gets messed up.
I realize this isn't the kind of "secondary source" we're encouraged to bring into this, but my mother (RIP) was really great at getting her very young students to "help her". She taught Shakespeare to little kids. I remember the way she'd summarize King Lear, after they'd been given a children's condensation of the story. She said "King Lear had three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, and Cordelia was a witch! Oh, she was mean!" knowing that at least one child would correct her, because of course Cordelia was the nice one. My mom would respond as if she was suddenly remembering it all now, "Oh, that's right, that's right" and would proceed to subject the children to more bizarre and inaccurate details which it was their job to correct. Very silly. Very fun. Not everyone can do that, though, I don't think. There seemed to be a knack to it, like having a green thumb. Even so, I wish I had some recordings of those so I could study them.
I can see where, consciously or not, I've imitated this in the past, playing a kind of trickster role for capable students who claim they don't understand something I know they understand. On these occasions, I'll act like I don't know what I'm talking about and am lost and overwhelmed. My rule is that I never do this if I actually feel overwhelmed, but I'm trying to get them to help me out. I've had some success with this, though it's gotten back to me a few times through channels that the student knew what I was doing and vaguely resented it, even if it did help them complete an assignment. This kind of thing is fine when starting out, but now that I'm actually learning about pedagogy, the rubber's hitting the road, and Learning by Summary provides a less histrionic way to get the same result.
This is just a note to say that this is an area I need to look at further, to measure it over and against "flow" as it's used in game design (which is very close to, if not quite the same as, the way it's used in psychology of play).