Ben R. Atkinson

EDU720 Week 3: Designing a Flipped Classroom

In Week 3 of this EDU720 module, we’ve moved on to focus on how we might design our flipped classroom activities which will form part of the first assessment. The contributions from my peers along with the outlined guidance for the first assessment, have both proved really useful when it came to planning my own flipped learning activity.

On the weekly form where we shared our thoughts on what makes a good flipped classroom experience, there was some in-depth debate under my post which focused on the equal opportunities for all learners. I had highlighted this along with ‘the task’ and how it ‘aligns to the LOs’ for the wider module. Under equal opportunities I talked about Katie Gimbar’s point about allowing students who miss out on the flipped activity, to catch up in class (Gimbar, 2011). Feedback on this idea, Ben James felt that Gimbar’s approach was perhaps not the most successful, suggesting that the idea of ‘making those people watch the content while others broke into groups, it felt like you’d only be reinforcing those boundaries between the people who are left behind and the people who are doing well’ (Evans James, 2019). This debate continued with Paul suggesting ‘it did appear as if there were boundaries of ‘them’ and ‘us’ still appearing’, before going on to pose the question ‘If these learners continue with their lack of engagement, what happens?’ (Clements, 2019). This debate was really interesting and useful in my own planning and it was key to me changing my approach to the students who might not engage with the material, concluding that it is perhaps ‘better to consider the type of activity rather than how different groups of learners might move ahead or fall behind’ (Atkinson-Foster, 2019). This lead to me focusing on video as a resource in the flipped classroom, something we’ve had a lot of success with at Lincoln, particularly when students record their own presentations at home, as opposed to giving them in class.

For the flipped classroom activity itself, I decided to revisit one element of my micro-teach session form the first EDU710 module and see if it could be improved by flipping the classroom. The ice-breaker activity at the start of my micro-teach session, was the element that my student group felt was the least engaging and, in fact, quite confusing for students who didn’t have much context on the module as a whole. As such, I felt this element was a good candidate for the flipped learning treatment as in my podcast resources I could actually include a lot of additional content about the three artists in my ice-breaker, which might otherwise take a lot of time to cover in the in-class session. This week I also decided to take some of what Aaron Sams covered in his podcast on the subject of extending the flipped classroom (Aaron Sams – Flipped Classroom: The Next Step, 2015) and build into my activity a project-based approach to the summative assessment which I hope will help the students to focus on this final goal throughout their learning across the module as a whole.

Overall, this week’s learning activities have proved very useful in helping me to cryistalise my ideas around the flipped learning activity and to think about what the resources from the previous week, from both Katie Gimbar and Aaron Sams, alongside the plans and thoughts shared by peers and tutors on the online forums. I’m looking forward to running my flipped activity with my students and hope that it will be successful.

Reference List 

Atkinson-Foster, B. (2019) Topic: Week 3: Forum – What do you need to remember when designing a flipped classroom approach? Posted on 13^th February 2019. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/344/discussion_topics/8483?module_item_id=19525 (Accessed: 14 February 2019).

Aaron Sams – Flipped Classroom: The Next Step (2015). USA.

Evans James, B. (2019) Topic: Week 3: Forum – What do you need to remember when designing a flipped classroom approach? Posted on 13^th February 2019. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/344/discussion_topics/8483?module_item_id=19525 (Accessed: 14 February 2019).

Clements, P. (2019) Topic: Week 3: Forum – What do you need to remember when designing a flipped classroom approach? Posted on 13^th February 2019. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/344/discussion_topics/8483?module_item_id=19525 (Accessed: 14 February 2019).

Gimbar, K. (2011) What If Students Don’t Watch The Videos? – FAQ – Katie Gimbar’s Flipped Classroom. USA.