Is Learning Flipping?

The flipped classroom has been used in different ways for the past decade in education. More recently, the idea of flipping professional development has been experimented with at schools and in corporate training. In both cases, the idea is to rethink what we want to spend our time with in face-to-face sessions and how can we move learning before and after those sessions to be more self-directed.

I am doing a presentation this week at the 2015 Annual Member Conference hosted by the Connecticut Education Network (CEN) on flipped learning. This event draws participants from educators (K-12 and higher ed), municipalities, libraries, local businesses and State of Connecticut agencies.

I asked for my session to be paired with another session by Edward Iglesias who is the Educational Administrator for Central Connecticut State University on Library Makerspaces and Community Organizations.

I want to not just talk about how flipped learning might work in any school setting, but also to have the participants try some flipped learning before and at the session. My flipped exercise is to ask those who will attend my session on "Flipping the Learning Model" to try a simple activity BEFORE the conference. By flipping this portion of the learning, we gain time in the session, and get to focus on the portion that I consider to be more critical to the face-to-face learning.

You take a chance in doing this - What if no one does the pre-activity?

It's the same chance we take as teachers at all levels when we assign homework that will lead into a class session. As an English teacher for the past four decades, I have often had the experience of wanting to discuss an assigned reading and finding that only a portion of the class has done the reading (or purchased the book!).

What do I do in that situation? Stop the lesson? Do the reading in class? Proceed with the discussion using those who did the reading? I have probably done all of those things at some time depending on the lesson and the grade level, but how can we increase the number of learners who complete the activities before attending the live sessions?

For this particular "homework" the assignment concerns Smartphone Audio Enhancement. The task I have set for attendees is to experiment with one or more ways to increase the volume and sound quality of a smartphone using simple materials and no electronics or additional power.

They are asked to bring at least one result of their DIY experimentation to the live session.

I made a web page with samples but I am hoping that a few people will go deeper and experiment on their own with original designs.

In our face-to-face session, we will test samples with a decibel meter, and we will discuss how this simple exercise can be applied to classroom learning. The applications are deliberately not stated by me beforehand, though applying it to math and physics are obvious choices. But getting other areas to think about the applications of this pedagogy - if not this particular lesson - is more important.

Overall, I want attendees to see that flipped learning in a classroom or for professional development or personal growth is less about when and where we learn and more importantly about how we learn. We know students are learning in and out of the classroom. They are learning what we want them to learn and what they want to learn. They are using traditional educational tools and methods, and tools they have discovered on their own and in ways we never considered.

I think about the idea that things are often flipped over in a revolution. Don't back away. Join in!

Making Learning Visible to Increase Student Engagement

On March 13, I will be presenting on "Making Learning Visible to Increase Student Engagement" at the NJEDge Faculty Showcase. This "Best Practices" presentation was inspired in part by the educational research from the Project Zero group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

I will be talking about the practice of using a public forum in both undergraduate and graduate online and face-to-face classes (at NJIT and at Montclair State University) and having students publicly reflect on their learning experiences.

Requiring students to document their work in a class forum immediately changes student ownership of their work. This type of documentation makes learning visible, rather than the private 1:1 relationship that assessment and evaluation often has between a student and instructor.

I will explain the documentation and process reflection methodology and show student examples. This practice borrows on earlier use of and the pedagogy of portfolios.

The Making Learning Visible (MLV) Project was based on collaborative research between Project Zero researchers and educators from the Municipal Preschools of Reggio Emilia, Italy. MLV investigated how best to understand, document, and support individual and group learning for children and adults. I read about it in Making Thinking Visible and Visible Learners. The five key principles are that
learning is purposeful, social, emotional, empowering, and representational.

In particular, the aspect of learning and teaching in MLV that I identify most strongly with is the role of observation and documentation in deepening and extending learning.

Documentation involves one or more specific questions that guide the process, often with an epistemological focus (questions on learning).

Documentation also involves collectively analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating individual and group observations. (It's interesting that the keynote speaker at the Showcase next month will be Etienne Wenger-Trayner who is a leader in the field of social learning theory, and coined the term "communities of practice," and their application to organizations.)

This process is strengthened by multiple perspectives and so it is necessary to make the learning visible. It becomes public when it is shared with other learners, parents, teachers or the public.

Prompting reflective thinking during learning helps learners develop strategies to apply new knowledge to the complex situations in their day-to-day activities. Reflective thinking helps learners attach new knowledge to prior understanding, and also understand their own thinking and learning strategies.

I find that this practice is also very beneficial to me as an instructor in grading student work as it reveals the hidden process that cannot be seen in only grading a final product.

Ultimately, I have found that this is another way to promote student engagement. Teachers in K-12 have known intuitively that displaying student work lets students know that their work is valued and that the classroom space is shared.

The MOOC Experience: Faculty Reflections

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) are growing in popularity at colleges and universities across the country at a rapid pace. They are the newest type of online learning experience open to people around the world.

I will be part of a panel discussion at William Paterson University offered by the Technology Across the Curriculum and Instructional Research Technology group and Co-Sponsored by the NJEDge Academic Technology Group. The event, "The MOOC Experience: Faculty Reflections," is on October 29, 2013. We will discuss the brief history of the MOOC, design principles, and the experience of teaching/facilitating a MOOC.

After light refreshment at noon, the panel discussion will  start at 12:30.  Following the discussion, the NJEDge Academic Technology Group will continue this discussion its first meeting of the academic year.

SITE: William Paterson University, 300 Pompton Road, Library Auditorium, Building 10, Wayne, New Jersey 07470

For registration information: http://njedge.net/events/

The event will be streamed live and later archived at NJVID.Net.

About the Panelists

I have been designing and teaching online courses since 2000. I was the Manager of Instructional Technology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology for seven years where I managed the design of online courses for the University as well as for corporate clients. From 2008-2012, I directed the Federal writing grant at Passaic County Community College. I continue to teach at PCCC and also online for the graduate program in Professional Technical Communication at NJIT.  I have taught and learned in a MOOC environment forp2pu.org since 2011 and this year I taught the “Academia and the MOOC” course offered by the Canvas Network in 2013. I started my career in education in 1975 as a secondary school teacher of English.

Also on the panel is Mary Zedeck, an Instructional Designer with Seton Hall University’s Teaching, Learning and Technology Center where she is responsible for supporting faculty in the design, integration and assessment of technology resources for courses and programs on campus, as well as hybrid and online. Mary was a designer and facilitator with me on the "Academia and the MOOC" course this past spring. She also manages the Freshman Studies ePortfolio program and is leading the campus Early Alert Retention Initiative.

Dr. Sandra. L. Miller provides leadership and vision for the departments of Academic Technology, Media Services, and Broadcast, Production and Support for Cable, Satellite, and Videoconferencing. Miller was the PI for NJVID, an IMLS National Leadership Grant in 2007-2011. Miller’s recent conference presentations have included: Lilly Conference on “Creating a Video Dialogue Using Video Clips” in 2013, EDUCAUSE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference in 2012 on “Planning for Informal Learning Spaces”, EDUCAUSE National Conference in 2010 on “NJVid: A Collaborative Portal for Statewide Video Access” and “Focus Groups as Formative Assessment” at CCUMC in 2008. Miller (2013) currently has a chapter on “Creating a Video Dialogue” in the Plugged-In Professor, Eds., Ferris, S. and Wilder, P., has published with Felson, J. “Student response systems: Are they for large classes only?” in the College and University Media Review 2009, “Faculty Focus Groups” in the College and University Media Review 2007-2008, “Video as process and product” in EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 2005 and numerous other technology articles. Miller was awarded the Innovation Technology Award by NJLA-CUS in 2011 and along with NJEDge, the 2012 WOW award from WCET. Miller has served as an NGLC Grant Reviewer, EDUCAUSE Review article reviewer, and is President-Elect for CCUMC. Miller received her doctorate in Educational Technology from Pepperdine University.

Mung Chiang is the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. His research on networking received the Alan T. Waterman Award (2013) and the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award (2012). A Technology Review TR35 Award recipient (2007) and founder of the Princeton EDGE Lab, his technologies have resulted in several commercial adoptions. His education activities received the Frederick Emmons Terman Award (2013) from ASEE. He started the “3 Nights and Done” learning platform, and his MOOC reached 90,000 students in 2012-2013. The corresponding textbooks, “Networked Life: 20 Questions and Answers,” which received the PROSE Award in Engineering and Technology (2012) from AAP, and “Networks Illustrated: 8 Principles without Calculus”, adapted to individual readers via a mobile app. He chairs Princeton University’s Committee on Classroom Design, the founding steering committee of the IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, and co-chaired the U.S. NITRD Workshop on Complex Engineered Networks.

Dr. Bela Florenthal graduated from the Smeal College of Business Administration, Pennsylvania State University with a Ph.D. in Marketing. Her professional areas of interest include social media, e-learning, e-tailing/retailing, and culture-based behavior. Her teaching experience is in Marketing Management, Consumer Behavior, Introduction to Marketing, and Marketing Research.

Loretta C. Mc Laughlin Vignier is an Assistant Professor of Media Production and Broadcast Journalism at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey specializing in television production. She has served as the chairperson of the Technology Across the Curriculum (TAC) Committee since 2011. In 2012, she moderated a campus-wide forum on E-books. In spring 2013, Loretta co-presented at an iPad teaching circle. She is currently doing research on the use of cell phones to alleviate test-taking anxiety.

Christopher Brinton is a third year PhD Candidate at Princeton University in the Department of Electrical Engineering. His primary research focus is on developing machine learning and social networking techniques to enhance the efficacy of massively scalable digital and online education. He is a MOOC co-instructor, reaching out to over 90,000 students from 2012-2013, and co-author of the textbook Networks Illustrated: 8 Principles Without Calculus, which became a best-seller on Amazon, and also adapted to individual readers in a mobile app format. Chris received his Master’s Degree in EE from Princeton University in May 2013, and his BSEE from The College of New Jersey (valedictorian and summa cum laude) in May 2011.