If you ‘flip your classroom‘ you reverse the lecture and homework elements of a lesson: lecture at home and do homework at school. The idea is that you replace instruction by a video or an e-learning course. This gives the student the opportunity to apply his knowledge under supervision of their teacher. This is the advantage of the flipped classroom. In this blog I will explain what the flipped classroom is and how you can start flipping your own classroom. But I will also show you how flipping your classroom together with the right use of eLearning tools can increase the retention significantly. You will see that technical skills or a large budget are no longer a requirement to make this happen. Everybody can flip his classroom now. I believe all teachers and trainers who do face-to-face lessons or training should at least consider this option.
Flip your classroom?
The ‘old school’ method is preparing at home (hopefully), the classroom lecture, and an assignment at home.
With the flipped classroom you switch the lecture and the homework. Originally the flipped classroom idea was done very simple. You record a video of your lecture and the students watch this at home. This frees up time in your class, so you can spent time on assignments that focus on the higher levels of learning.
There is one big problem with flipping the classroom. A lecture that only has as a goal to transfer knowledge is not very effective and the same goes for a video of such a lecture. You know as a teacher or trainer that there is more to knowledge transfer. So there is room for improvement
Use e-Learning to flip your classroom!
eLearning gives you the ability to raise the level of the home lecture. A course with video and quizzes will be much more effective than just a video recording of you explaining something. Creating eLearning used to be technically challenging and expensive, but that is in the past. You now have elearning software like easygenerator that you can use. You don’t need any training, you don’t need to code anything. It is simple, intuitive and not expensive (there is even a free version). eLearning will not only raise the level of the home lecture it will also give you tracking and tracing. You can see how much time your students have spent and how they did. That is a nice check before class but even more important is that it will give you insight which elements they are struggling with. That is important information in the preparation of your face-to-face lesson.
Use e-Learning to increase retention
You probably have heard about the forgetting curve. In order to protect itself from overload, the brain will forget the majority of the information that is receives.
(Image from: http://www.mentormegate.com/wordpress/2014/06/10/mentor-me-gate-the-forgetting-curve/)
In order to prevent this you need to repeat things, they more you repeat the better it will stick. Just plain repetition is one thing, but the retention will increase significantly if your brain has to process the information, if you have to think on it. Flipping the classroom in itself already offers a big advantage here, you have time to make your student think in the classroom, because you don’t have to lecture. But you can do better.
Repeat, repeat, repeat
Repetition is the way to go, but if you just repeat the same thing over and over, it will be boring. eLearning allows you to follow-up the lesson with a whole series of small courses (learning nuggets or learning snacks) and quizzes. You can offer the content over a period of time, so you repeat it, but you change the form all the time. From video, to a question, to a learning nugget, a small case, to an assignment. This will have a huge effect on the retention, you can increase it from 30% to 80 er even 90%. This is a form of spaced learning, where you spread out the learning over time with the right repetition (repeat something at least three times).
The Learning 2019 conference
I have been to a ton of learning conferences but this will be my first time at #learning2019. I’m looking forward to it and I’m planning to report on all interesting sessions via this blog.
