iCTLT: Day 2 - To Flip or not to Flip? That is the Question.

First, I would like to qualify that I'm not an existing practitioner. Back in those days when I was teaching, I could vividly remembered the mad rush to complete the syllabus in time for the 'O' levels Cambridge. Countless nights were spent drilling content and concepts into the students who survived the sessions by subsisting on a meagre diet of khong Guan biscuits (proudly sponsored by moi). 

Looking back, Web 2.0 social media tools were in existence then and I had also humbly attempted to use the Facebook to create a class community to augment formal class lessons as well. A selection of carefully curated Youtube videos delivering content and 3D modelling of human organs were uploaded to the social learning space. Furthermore, I also remembered using Camtasia, a presentation recording software to record my lectures and Powerpoint sequence flow. These videos, coupled with scaffolding e-worksheets were bundled and delivered via our ver own FB community. Suddenly, there's this deja vu feeling that starts to swell from within - Am I not "flipping" my classroom?

Flipped Classroom, or as Mr Aaron Sams - one of the most dedicated and innovative teacher I've every seen- prefers, Flipped Learning is not an ingenius creation. It's intriguing to know that we've all been practising it or have done it at a moment in time. The astonishing thing is that, flipped learning could be dated back as far as 200 years back - at Westpoint (USMA). Officer cadets at Wespoint undergo a rigorous learning path devised based on the Thayer's method. The Thayer's method stipulates the dissemination of course learning objectives and supplementary reading materials to cadets prior to them attending face-to-face lessons. Keller's Personalised System of Instruction (PSI) in the 1960s also emphasises self-paced learning and mastery of units i.e. progress to the next level when one has master the current set of contents. Keller further suggests that lectures are means of motivational devices that help to augment learning. Flipped learning works along similar principles articulated by these earlier theories. 

I was particularly drawn to Sams' use of the Universal Design Learning (UDL) guidelines to further reinforce flipped learning. One of the objectives of flipping is to hopefully provide opportunities for differentiated learning and UDL has articulated a set of guidelines to enable educators to explore means and ways in delivering the knowledge, accept students' variety of ways in demonstrating competence in a subject matter and in motivating students' learning. Another team of teachers from Bowen Secondary School also presented refreshing idea of using gamification of game-based rules to define their flipped lessons. As opposed to popular conception of gamification, the term doesn't necessary refer to a gaming e-courseware for learning. It just simply means the employment of game-based rules and mechanics i.e. scoreboard, points, badges, levels, tokens etc. to augment a lesson.

"To flip or not to flip?" I guess the motivation behind flipping varies with different educators. One thing is consistent though - flipping a lesson requires tremendous amount of hard work, dedication and conviction by the educator and of course - flipping doesn't guarantee good results or outcomes, but one thing for sure, it could almost certainly guarantee an unforgettable learning process for the students.