Apologies for the long blogging absence: I've been grading pretty much non-stop since the beginning of the quarter. I've been thinking a lot about "flipping" the classroom lately--it's kind of the cool new pedagogical topic. Flipping the classroom involves leveraging technology to increase teacher-student interaction in the classroom. This TED Talk outlines the basics.
If you don't have time to watch the video, here's the short form: students watch videorecorded lectures on their own time and do what was traditionally homework during class time. The videos are ideal because they're self-leveling: students can play them repeatedly, rewind, pause, etc., and they're constantly available for review. After mastering the concept presented in the video, there's some kind of short assessment given prior to arriving in class. This allows the student to self-assess and review things that were unclear. In class, students work on problem sets with the instructor available to guide them. My colleagues tell me that an hour's worth of lecture can be compressed into roughly 15 minutes of video (think about it--how much time in class do you spend waiting for people to finish writing down what's on the Power Point, going back to previous topics, etc.?)
This works great for STEM disciplines: the videos teach a set of skills, and you practice applying those skills under the watchful eye of your teacher. At UWT, many of the courses I teach are humanities electives: a history of rock, a rap music class, and music and crisis. These are "traditional" college classes where the students are assigned a reading and they come to class and we discuss it. Some have argued that humanities classrooms by their nature have always been flipped. The question that I've been wrestling with is how to combine the new technology/pedagogy without sacrificing things like books and articles--I don't want my classes to turn into "let's watch YouTube for homework and talk about the movies" (that's what Facebook is for).
The key to using this in the humanities classrooms, I think, is to understand that the videos don't provide content; the videos demonstrate skills. So I'm thinking about how I might create videos that teach students to dig deeper into the readings, to bring different readings into dialogue with one another, etc.--basically use the videos to reinforce core curriculum learning outcomes. Students could then take a short quiz (online or at the beginning of class) or do some sort of free-write before we have discussion (as a class or in small groups).
One way that I've already started to use this is for giving students feedback on paper drafts. I'm using Jing and Screencast (both free). Jing is a screen capture picture/movie maker, and Screencast is a image/video hosting platform that plays well with Jing. I have students e-mail me drafts in Word, I read through them once and correct things using "Track Changes." On the second pass through the paper, I narrate my corrections and suggestions using Jing. I send the students a link to the video when I'm done. So far, feedback from the students has been overwhelmingly positive. I've also sent out their most recent assignment in the form of a video, and intend to (maybe) make a short video about common writing mistakes/best practices.
I'm more excited to try this in the theory classroom--it seems like it would fit very well (I know Kris Schaeffer has done quite a lot of this). Give the students a video to watch that describes, say, how to read in C clefs. You can use Sibelius, Finale, or some other program, record a screen capture video and upload it. Students who play viola might watch it once (or never); students who are bass clef readers might need to watch it five times. When they come to class, you could, for instance, give them a chorale that's written in C clefs and have the re-write it in piano score. You're there to guide them through the process if and when questions arrive; the viola player is not bored out of her mind for an hour, and the bass player arrives prepared.
The potential for use in aural skills is interesting to me too. I was frustrated by the amount of time spent assessing students (which I think is an important part of aural skills), which left little or no time for me to actually teach them how to sightsing or take dictation. Now, I can create a non-linear set of videos that teach the techniques of these disciplines, let the students watch them whenever they want, as often as they want--perhaps making video recommendations based on the melodies that they'll be tested on.
I'll write more about this as I explore more of it. I have to get back to making videos for the paper drafts...
This works great for STEM disciplines: the videos teach a set of skills, and you practice applying those skills under the watchful eye of your teacher. At UWT, many of the courses I teach are humanities electives: a history of rock, a rap music class, and music and crisis. These are "traditional" college classes where the students are assigned a reading and they come to class and we discuss it. Some have argued that humanities classrooms by their nature have always been flipped. The question that I've been wrestling with is how to combine the new technology/pedagogy without sacrificing things like books and articles--I don't want my classes to turn into "let's watch YouTube for homework and talk about the movies" (that's what Facebook is for).
The key to using this in the humanities classrooms, I think, is to understand that the videos don't provide content; the videos demonstrate skills. So I'm thinking about how I might create videos that teach students to dig deeper into the readings, to bring different readings into dialogue with one another, etc.--basically use the videos to reinforce core curriculum learning outcomes. Students could then take a short quiz (online or at the beginning of class) or do some sort of free-write before we have discussion (as a class or in small groups).
One way that I've already started to use this is for giving students feedback on paper drafts. I'm using Jing and Screencast (both free). Jing is a screen capture picture/movie maker, and Screencast is a image/video hosting platform that plays well with Jing. I have students e-mail me drafts in Word, I read through them once and correct things using "Track Changes." On the second pass through the paper, I narrate my corrections and suggestions using Jing. I send the students a link to the video when I'm done. So far, feedback from the students has been overwhelmingly positive. I've also sent out their most recent assignment in the form of a video, and intend to (maybe) make a short video about common writing mistakes/best practices.
I'm more excited to try this in the theory classroom--it seems like it would fit very well (I know Kris Schaeffer has done quite a lot of this). Give the students a video to watch that describes, say, how to read in C clefs. You can use Sibelius, Finale, or some other program, record a screen capture video and upload it. Students who play viola might watch it once (or never); students who are bass clef readers might need to watch it five times. When they come to class, you could, for instance, give them a chorale that's written in C clefs and have the re-write it in piano score. You're there to guide them through the process if and when questions arrive; the viola player is not bored out of her mind for an hour, and the bass player arrives prepared.
The potential for use in aural skills is interesting to me too. I was frustrated by the amount of time spent assessing students (which I think is an important part of aural skills), which left little or no time for me to actually teach them how to sightsing or take dictation. Now, I can create a non-linear set of videos that teach the techniques of these disciplines, let the students watch them whenever they want, as often as they want--perhaps making video recommendations based on the melodies that they'll be tested on.
I'll write more about this as I explore more of it. I have to get back to making videos for the paper drafts...