In week one we will be engaging in a flipped learning activity. This second podcast introduces the first artist we will look at, 1960s icon Patsy Cline. The podcast gives a brief overview of her life and career with reference to the themes we will be exploring throughout this module.
In week one we will be engaging in a flipped learning activity. This first podcast introduces the project-based approach that you will be taking for your first summative assessment. Please listen to the podcast below and make some notes about your summative assessment task.
This week, as we are getting ready to pilot our flipped classroom activities, we focused on the need to integrate said activities with wider module or programme of study. Reflecting back on the week, I feel it was useful to have some time to focus on how the flipped learning activities will integrate if only to ensure they are not siloed and seen as a ‘gimmicky’ activity by the students not really connected to the rest of the module or the wider learning objectives.
This week has been very useful in terms of helping me to further develop ideas for my flipped classroom approach and consider how to create successful podcast resources.
Thinking about the specifics of producing podcasts for the flipped learning activity, I found the resources from Katie Gimbar and Andy Peisley to be very useful in helping me to further develop my ideas for the podcasts in my flipped learning activity. As Gimbar points out ‘it’s you delivering the lecture information. Someone else is not giving the information in your classroom’ (Gimbar, 2011). I found this point to be very interesting as it suggests that there shouldn’t be a differentiation between the practitioner in the classroom and one presenting/delivering the podcast – they should be one at the same person. At first, this makes perfect sense, but when you consider in more depth there are many examples of podcasts and video resources where the presenter puts on a voice or tries to be something their not. Peisley picks up on this point in the guidance podcast for this week’s activity, suggesting that actually ‘making a bit of a fool of yourself is also helpful’ (Peisley, 2019) – it shows the students that the podcast is real, you are you and the students feel relaxed that, as Gimbar puts it, the ‘language is similar, you can say things in a way that you like them to be said. You can ensure the students relate to this’ (Gimbar, 2011).
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.