Throughout the last year I have been personally changing many of the way that I deliver and conduct my classroom. I was first intrigued by the idea of the flipped classroom as a way to have students have meaningful discussions regarding the material covered in my classes. In too many instances the students would work well in class and then something sinister would happen when they left, either they would encounter a problem and just give up or they would not do it. I saw the opportunity to correct these issues and tried flipping things around. Now just to be clear it has not been all nice things and the flipped room is not perfect, but it does allow for a change. Now with the word change being used I must discuss one of the issues that I had with students is getting them to actually change the way they do things. There were two camps to this: one camp hated it (students at either end of the achievement bar) and one group loved it (the average students). Some of the reasons students disliked it was:
- lack of technology to watch the videos
- change from the regular pattern of instruction
- 'I didn’t have time to watch the video' syndrome
Now is this system perfect, no, but it allows more learners to demonstrate their skills throughout the semester.