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The Post-Lecture Classroom
An anonymous reader writes "The Atlantic reports on a study into reversing the typical lecture/homework educational method. The study had students watch lecture videos at home, then use class time to work on activities. After three years of trials, the researchers found both a student preference for the new method and a 5% increase in exam scores. 'In 2012, that flipped model looked like this: At home, before class, students watched brief lecture modules, which introduced them to the day's content. They also read a textbook — the same, introductory-level book as in 2011 — before they arrived. When they got to class, Mumper would begin by asking them "audience response" questions. He'd put a multiple-choice question about the previous night's lectures on a PowerPoint slide and ask all the students to respond via small, cheap clickers. He'd then look at their response, live, as they answered, and address any inconsistencies or incorrect beliefs revealed. Maybe 50 percent of the class got the wrong answer to one of these questions: This gave him an opportunity to lecture just enough so that students could understand what they got wrong. Then, the class would split up into pairs, and Mumper would ask them a question which required them to apply the previous night's content... The pairs would discuss an answer, then share their findings with the class. At the end of that section, Mumper would go over any points relevant to the question which he felt the class failed to bring up.'"
So he basically used the socratic method?
So for a 3 credit hour class students normally spend 3 hours in class per week. Using this method they spend 3 hours
at home watching lectures then 3 hours in class and gain 5%. This isn't a win.
Back in the early 1990s, I had a high school math teacher who would assign the homework *before* she taught the lesson.
You were expected to read the chapter, try to do the homework, and then she'd answer any questions that you might have the next day in class.
You then had another night to correct whatever you needed before the homework was due. (and then start your reading for the next day's class).
It was 20+ years ago, but I seem to recall she'd hit us with quizzes as least once a week ... I just can't remember if they were at the beginning of the class, or the end. (and if they were at the beginning, were they on the reading from the night before, or two nights before?)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
OK so this is a more radical behavioural conditions change than Hawthorne tested, but still...
Is that 5% increase additive or multiplicative? An average of 70 going to a 75 vs an average of 70 going to 73.5.
I suppose you could argue that they are close enough not to matter, but I am still curious.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
That's basically the socratic method (still beloved in law schools). You go read the assignments, then come in and the teacher just asks the class questions / walks them through a case. When the class is confused or stupid (we all are sometimes) the teacher lectures on the finer points. Since the text is the primary lecturer, the teacher's role is just to know then law (best if they have their own opinions which are slightly skewed from the text's view) and to plan out a series of readings in the syllabus - not too much work.
/learn/ much in law school - that's what the barbri courses were for - to cram the law down your throat as hard and fast as possible. Law school mostly teaches how to think like a lawyer (break down a set of facts or statements into its component parts, look for inconsistencies, apply past conclusions of law to a present set of facts, etc).
Now.. the only problem is most lawyers I know (myself included) felt like we didn't actually
I wonder how this works for, say, history.
Yes, we should get all of our students used to unpaid overtime now.
Instead of relying on a teacher to teach the material, we'll ask them to learn it on their own.
Really, what fraction of students are going to watch a video of a lecture (ecch, sounds horrible) outside of school hours?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
My son is taking Algebra II class in college that is using this method. So far, so good. He says that being able to watch the lecture, then go into class to ask the instructor questions relating to the lecture and the homework is like having a tutor.
I don't know how well it would work for more "not centric" classes, though.
I don't know what the standard deviation of exam scores is, but a 5 percent improvement over 3 data points HARDLY seems statistically significant.
In my experience, the only downside to "flipping" a classroom is parent backlash. With a flipped classroom, the kids watch 10-15 minute videos and, to the parents, this is the kid just spending more time in front of an idiot box and don't really interact with the parents.
With a normal classroom, you lecture in class and then give the kids problems to do at home. Even if the parent has no idea what they are doing and "helps" the kids by making mistakes, undermines your lesson, etc., they still feel like they are spending "quality" time with their kids. This anecdote persists even though studies show kids spend either almost zero time on the work to get to the fun stuff OR they spend twice as long trying to do it because their support system doesn't know either and has to teach themselves first.
The funny thing is, with attentive parents, this actually helps because the parents can watch the videos with the kids and, when a big project comes, they actually can help them at home because they learned the basics when the kid did or are able to go back and watch the pertinent lecture.
sure it's a 5% improvement. having one class that's fundamentally different than all the others is a memory aid. of course.
but honestly, if all of your courses -- I had 7 at a time -- had an hour lecture for me to watch at home, would you watch 7 hours of lecture videos on your own? with no ability to interupt and ask for a clarification?
this just totally removes any concept of humans teaching humans. now it's about students learning on their own, and being corrected by teachers. sure it'll work, that's how business management and supervision works. it requires dedicated devotion. it's not something that students have any interest in doing.
if you're not going to teach me, I was always able to learn on my own. I never needed you to supervise the learning process.
The class format sounds interesting, but posting weekly video lectures means a ton of preparation time for the instructor. Add to that the in-class preparation time, and it looks like a lot more work.
It's like the pair programming debate. Some thrive under that setup, others will change companies to avoid it.
It should be noted that studies have consistently shown that pretty much any change in methodology leads to higher marks the first time is tested, as students place extra effort on the face of an unknown teaching technique. The challenge is to produce gains that are lasting, once the students have gotten used to taking classes this way.
where you learn more hands on with skills that you need to do your job.
This is exactly how the case method used in many business schools (notably Harvard) works.
There is a case assigned for each class and students read/watch videos related to the class. They formulate a solution to the problem. In class the group discusses it or listens to a lecture from someone who actually worked in the company in the case or is involved directly with the issue.
Often the class arrives at a solution together which is very different from what they had thought before they came to the class.Some stick to their original opinion. etc.
This works great for problems in business or in engineering design where there is no single ideal solution. If you have to design a sailboat to race , you have multiple choices, catamaran, windsails, mutiple sails etc. If each student designs his/her own ideal boat and an actual boat designer who actually built a boat for racing tells you why this would/ would not work, it approximates on the job training.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
I'm currently three weeks into a Physics class that's modeled on this concept. Let me tell you what it's like.
In theory: Students review the lecture material on their own time. In class, the instructor presents some Physics problems on the topic. The students work through them together in teams and learn from each other, and the instructor reviews each team's work to help them get past sticking points.
In practice: I review the lecture material on my own time. My classmates do not. They show up largely unprepared, and when presented with a basic problem, simply stare at it until someone else explains the entire problem to them. Typically, that means that I end up teaching my classmates Physics, and then showing them how I solved each of the problems. I need to do that, because a significant part of my grade is based on the performance of my team - i.e., the average of individual quiz scores of the members of my team.
The instructor routinely harangues students to come to class prepared, and is assigning increasing amounts of busywork to be performed outside of class to ensure that work is being done.
So for me - a very reliable self-starter and independent studier - this class model means that in addition to learning all of the material on my own, I also have to (1) spend several hours in class teaching the material to my classmates, (2) have my grade dragged down by my team members' poor performance, and (3) have to complete additional work outside of class to prove that I'm keeping up. In other words, of the 10+ hours a week that this class is requiring, LESS THAN HALF is spent learning the material and honing skills; the rest (including the 4+ hours of class time) is simply wasted, thanks to this poorly implemented learning model.
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
I grew up in Houston and Corpus Christi. They never gave homework, said they didn't believe in it. When I moved to Dallas, we always got homework. I couldn't believe it! Here we had been in school for 8 hours and now we were supposed to spend several more hours doing homework? Most people were only required to work 8 hours a day is the way I used to look at it. I guess you can tell what kind of student I was. Barely got through lower schools, went to college 4 years, didn't graduate. But ended up a software engineer, thanks to a real opportunity company - Southland Corp.
And didn't I read recently an article recently showing how homework is worthless?
The point is that this isn't really a win. It's just enforcing the best practices.
No it can be a win if done right, see below. I had two graduate level economics classes (micro and macro) that followed this model. The stock lectures were videotaped and made available for download. We watched them outside of class at our convenience and usually at 1.5x speed. If you are understanding the material 1.0x and 1.5x are effectively equivalent, if not there is rewind. Sometimes a tricky concept took a couple of rewinds.This was a win but not the biggest win.
These videos were not simply a recording of a past class lecture. The professors did a lecture specifically for the video and made sure any charts, graphs and writing on the whiteboard was recognizable on video. The videos had companion slideshows with key points, charts, etc and plenty of whitespace to take notes on if you printed them out.
The biggest win was having 100% of class time for questions, discussion and debate. Not just with the professor but between students as well. The professor instigating, steering and refereeing the debate at times.
When my various classmates and I talked amongst ourselves we recognized that we had some additional work to do outside of class, mitigated by 1.5x speed, but that we got so much more out of lectures we thought the new class format was an big improvement. YMMV. If the videos were simply a recording of a previous live class lecture the new format probably would have sucked. A purpose made video with accompanying material probably makes it work.
Issue is, time is finite. You're effectively doubling the time spend per each course ...
No. I've had two graduate level economics classes (micro and macro) that used this format. My classmates and I soon learned that watching at 1.5x speed works really well if you are getting the material, less likely to get bored and nod off. If not getting a particular difficult concept, rewind, slow down, repeat as necessary - which is also an improvement offered by video.
Also issue is the time needed to prepare, classes would need to be staggered to allow at minimum the three (or however long is needed) hours between them.
No, my classmates and I generally watched the videos the night before the class.
I much prefer just listening to a lecture in class, and then doing the work at home. Working in class is a pain.. and I certainly don't find much benefit in working with classmates usually.
Back in the early 1990s, I had a high school math teacher who would assign the homework *before* she taught the lesson. You were expected to read the chapter, try to do the homework, and then she'd answer any questions that you might have the next day in class. You then had another night to correct whatever you needed before the homework was due. (and then start your reading for the next day's class).
My second year calculus professor did something similar, except that the homework on a topic was collected before his lecture, no turn ins once the lecture begins. We had to read appropriate sections, figure it out on our own well enough to do the homework, do the homework and then in the professor's opinion we were "qualified" to hear his lecture. Needless to say when this was announced on day 1 half the class dropped. I stuck with it, my job made this my only open time slot.
As difficult as it was I have to admit that the professor's method worked. I took the rest of the series of classes with this professor. I learned more in 2nd year with him than in 1st year with more traditional professors.
And the problem was that a few lazy/slow students would end up stalling the entire class. So for example, if the material covered eigenvectors in linear algebra, and the student was supposed to know what they are and try the homework before the class. There were always a few bad apples that would come in, claim they couldn't understand any of the material, and force the instructor to walk them through the lecture again. And you couldn't just tell the students to RTFM.
So it basically became a case where the good students were hearing the same thing twice over, and couldn't get help with the tougher material (because the easy questions were taking a lot of time to cover). If the teacher skipped the easy problems, the lazy students would complain and whine.
In the typical scenario, all students heard the same material once (in class), and the lazy students would struggle with the homework (or mooch off the better students) while the good students would do well. In the end, it basically came down to the smart students helping the slower ones with the easy problems, so that the class could focus on the tough problems.
That's basically the socratic method (still beloved in law schools) ... I wonder how this works for, say, history.
It works well in business school too, at least for micro and macro economics and some strategy classes.
... Those were the sort of discussion I really loved.
As a computer science undergraduate who was also a history geek taking a history class every quarter for fun I would speculate that it would work well in history as well. The book and lectures can go into the facts and provide some background to the environment that events took place in. The lectures could focus on discussions as to why the various players made the decisions that they did, what influenced them,
In mid-grade school I had a particularly exceptional and progressive teacher who ran experiments like this (Canada)...
Rather than the regular curriculum delivery, each student had a filing box where the entire year's assignments where defined on cards (with references to what pages in what textbooks should be read). The students were allowed to do them as quickly they wished. Once an assignment was completed the card (and the results) were placed back in the box for the teacher to review, grade, and comment on (if needed).
There were almost no "lectures" (read: the teacher standing in front of the classroom talking to the utter boredom of most of the students). In fact, the classroom was broken up into various different areas with partitions upon which the students could stick things -- drawings, notes, etc. There wasn't even line-of-sight from most of the classroom to the blackboard!
Instead, each morning there was a "class meeting" in a common area (with a blackboard) where everyone got to share where they were in their "program", and ask questions or make comments (if they were comfortable doing so). Once a week each student would have a one-on-one "meeting" with the teacher to review progress.
Any student could request additional meetings with the teacher at any time if they were having difficulty with a subject. Often the teacher would then ask a stronger student in a subject to help a weaker student. I was often asked to help in (simple) Maths and (simple) Science. I was often helped in just about all other subjects, like English, Social Studies, etc...
It is interesting how memory works... I had largely forgotten about this exceptional learning environment and experience until this article jogged my memory.
I must try to thank the teacher. He was clearly ahead of his time....
Only the arrogant idiot who thinks that he is smarter than the instructors believe that lectures are worthless. Or maybe I just went to a school where people actually took classes because they were challenging, not because they were easy A's. University is probably the only opportunity that most of us will have to try to glean some of the brilliance of the top researchers in their fields. Why would you want to throw away any minute of lecture?
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
So, let me get this straight: you assign students some homework and then have them discuss the material in class? Holy cow, these folks really are standing education on its head!
If a student actually follows through with this then they usually end up spending more time with the material. (Out of class lectures + in class work + out of class work). So maybe the increase in grades is not that amazing.
In almost all of my university courses there was an expectation that the student would come to lecture having already read the relevant chapters of the textbook. Generally the professor did not rely on the students actually having done so, but this is essentially the same thing just using a different medium.
Atlantic's article has some big flaws. The issue with what you want out of a classroom depends on the criteria. If your goal is to charge as much as possible for students who will fail to obtain degrees, while increasing the size and salaries of administrations, then yes, having minimum wage adjuncts teaching everything and reducing tenured teachers is great.
If your goal is to have the maximum percentage of your students actually finish their degrees, then it's a very bad plan. And The Atlantic is hardly an objective party in this discussion. They have a vested interest in online, for-profit education replacing the model of universities as centers of academic excellence and research. It's basically the "school reform" argument transferred to higher education.
Think about the professors that had the greatest impact on you as a person and professionally. How many of them were tenured and how many were harried adjuncts teaching 8 courses per semester just to be able to afford to live?
The enormous growth in the cost of higher education has not been because professors are making too much money or because they've got too much job security.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Like other pointed out, group learning and flipped classroom are two different things. But now to my point. You think, you could learn material just by consuming and memorizing them. This is often thought by students just out of high school, sometime even with older students. However, this is bullshit. Learning anything is not to memorize the stuff, but to understand it. One very effective method is to teach other people. Their questions, question your knowledge and your grasp of the topic. By that you have to think about it in different angles. In most cases you learn a lot from that process.
In your special university, the material to learn and the homework might only designed to test your ability to memorize the stuff. In that case, you might think that the extra work does not add up, but for any later work as a scientist or in industry, true understanding is necessary. In short a book cannot solve problems only an educated person can.
As an instructional designer, I don't know why so many people are surprised with this. If you spend more time interacting with your students, instead of teaching at them, they are bound to achieve more in the course.
I cannot find the article at the moment, but earlier this week I was reading about an instructor who, instead of lecturing, used edX's circuits MOOC in his course. He then goes on to state that instead of spending his time lecturing, he significantly increased the amount of time he spend corresponding with the students--in other words, he flipped the classroom. The result was a significant improvement in exam scores
As stated here before, this goes back to Socrates. Instead of lecturing at your students, telling them what to think, interact with them, question them, get to know them, etc.
Good teaching transcends modality and fad.
Ha! I was required to have one of those clickers for a class. The hardware is cheap, but it must be registered for the class in order to work with the software, and to register for the class you have to pay the company that makes the clicker $30.00. Need it again next semester, pay $30.00 again. They are kind of cool, but the business model boarders on extortion. There is no technical reason to register other than to get your name on a list, but for that privilege they charge you over and over again.
It's called recitation and office hours.
Try going to them instead of heading to the bars.
The cold hard reality is a 3 credit course means 15 hours of studying a week plus 3 hours of class time, or 12 hours of studying with 3 hours of lab time and 3 hours of class time.
When you spend less than that, and don't repeat things by review, you short circuit retention and understanding.
Not that this is a self-selected group that likes to learn things by video review and doesn't care that said method does not work for everyone.
Now, for a literature or arts course, you can substitute time spent in discussions (a form of studying) and critique (including field trips), but for sciences shorting the class time only works for people who get it right the first time they read something. Which is a very small subset of potential students.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwslBPj8GgI
"Eric Mazur: "I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material. Who was to blame? The students? The material? I will explain how I came to the agonizing conclusion that the culprit was neither of these. It was my teaching that caused students to fail! I will show how I have adjusted my approach to teaching and how it has improved my students' performance significantly." Eric Mazur is the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University. An internationally recognized scientist and researcher, he leads a vigorous research program in optical physics and supervises one of the largest research groups in the Physics Department at Harvard University."
I guess teaching physics is close to teaching rocket science? :-) So, even rocket scientists who care can imporve their teaching...
Basicall, he expects students to do reading before class, then he asks a question, then gets responses, and then has students talk to their neighbors int he classroom to justify the answers to each other. Sounds similar to the approach in the original article.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
This idea of instruction bears much resemblance to that depicted in the movie (and television series) The Paper Chase. That is, "you learn the law, and I'll train your minds."
Yes, sometimes the old ways are best.
So, the data says that yes, hybrid (GOOD Hybrid) classrooms do work pretty well. The data also goes on to say that a lot of this is contextual, and really cannot be generalized. There's so much hype that forgets about entire populations of learners. I think the most important thing is to offer choice- learners will self determine what works best for them.
He had all his lecturs recorded (on video tape at the time) and you would watch them on your own. He then spent all of the class time (and lunch and before/after school office hours) going around the students (with a take-a-number system) either grading their work and sending them on to the next chunk or helping them solve problems. Students also helped each other during this time.
I had him for Computer Science and Physics, and in many ways it was the best learning environment I have ever been in.
David Lang
Summary is very Kafkaesque
"They also read a textbook"
Just getting a student to read a textbook or in anyway prepare for a class would increase their knowledge.
The problem is that poor students cant do that. There is not an environment that allows for that. When poor people are not in school they usually have to be home, to do choirs - not homework, or at work to be able to eat.
Only the upper class can afford to do this. Not all families have internet or computers at home. They have educated families that can help them understand what is happening.
As the parent states - STUDY TIME IS REQUIRED. I've seen worthless busy work which misses the point...(but it pleases many of today's parents) although the students are not in the right perspective to objectively classify it and sadly, I'd say many parents as well.
Reality is that the old models WORK and are time tested. Most students don't put in the time, they'll game the system to do as little as possible - some even teach them how to game tests to maximize their scores (undermining the purpose but it does help to normalize the results.) I find these fads laughable - I'm in a university and while students are more mature, they still can't be expected to do enough studying. The old timers tell me it has gotten worse over the decades and that metrics have increased influence - you can't get away with flunking everybody anymore and the students know this. No, it's not always the teachers fault. Your only power is their end grade for the students who are not actually interested in the topic. I would like to see these experiments carried out on struggling inner city schools without massive grants -- we largely seem only interested in improving things to those who are already advantaged when the impact is minimal compared with helping the disadvantaged. (I do agree with the /. article about how research profs suck. duh! Nobody would want to research and then be distracted by clueless undergrads. )
Just because you had work done on your teeth doesn't make you a Dentist. Same with education; however, everybody is not only an education critic, they are also expert advisers. Especially parents, who want their brat to excel despite a large number of them not doing their job as parents. I come from a line of educators. I have limited experience and training in education; but far more than the average commentator or "reporter." I know about how crazy parents are. They need to be kept as far as possible from influencing the education SYSTEM.
The traditional education models got mankind to where we are today. Humans no longer evolve (sorry.) We can use science to improve education but it's not a simple process; it's far more of an art form - the human brain is too complex and social sciences are so fuzzy and inconclusive. Most these studies are not rigorous; which should be required given how soft sciences are the most difficult to apply the scientific process. One only has to look at the fad from the 70s-80s in reading education in the USA to see how much harm it can cause (FYI, they dumped phonetics and composition for a lexicon memorization scheme. it resulted in poor reading skills many years later... but short term it looked great on tests. )
If you want to seriously improve things, you need to classify students by learning styles. The traditional students remain the same. Experiment on the other groups instead of potentially going backwards. Poor parents cause more harm than anything; we should stop trying to make the school compensate for them... that is, compensate enough to raise test scores. Metrics are a gross oversimplification nearly ALL the time. I had an award winning teacher who didn't look so great on paper --- she purposely took all the troubled kids who shouldn't have gotten to her grade and fixed them. At the end, they forced her into retirement and belittled her accomplishments with her poor results with their metrics. She saved lives, literally.
An old-style lecture works fine. I've only experienced it 1 time as an undergrad. An interactive lecture is similar to a class discussion. Most the time people watch a lecture like it was TV, some take notes. In which case, it may as well be online and acted out by a performer. If everybody is prepared the group will move pretty well together. Masters courses are closer to this and from what I'm told, is that 60 years ago undergrad was more like masters in this respect. Undergrad has been turning into high school and high school has been failing. it's no surprise they are slowly combining them; yes, i
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it's the level of theory not hands on only or theory only.
To much theory is not good and for some stuff do you really need to know about stuff like the low level file system stuff to make a game where the os does the file system work for you?? Low level GPU coding or open gl codeing?
What about networking / system admin work where you need to know about the higher level stuff and need to know some vendor stuff?
Right, because doing that is trivial. After all, every medium-sized town has at least 174 top tier colleges to choose from.
Why are you assuming they're going to graduate? This isn't the whole course, just one module. The first time the slackers hit an individual assessment (or, heaven help them, an exam) they'll be transferring to Underwater Poetry or Feminist Knitwear Design quicker than you can say Media Studies.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."