Flipping

Yes, it's the latest buzzy thing.  Let's flip the classroom, so that the "content" is perused by students at home, and "homework" is done in the classroom.

The boring bits that don't actually need anyone to be in the same room at the same time are covered asynchronously.  When everyone is actually together, we focus on collaboration and support.

I love this idea.  I really, really love this idea.

But the "flipped classroom" has one giant, impossible-to-miss flaw:  the assumption that students actually do stuff ahead of going to class.

Students rarely do things like that.  Most of the students I know do their class readings in fits and spurts as their assignments loom into view.  If they manage to comfortably survive their tutorials without doing the readings, they may even give those readings a miss altogether.  There's some "class preparation" work that is probably never done.

And when it comes to watching things online at home, I think their priorities are elsewhere.  The idea that some 20-year-old kid (or, worse, some 13-year-old kid) is going to spend their valuable Youtube watching time watching teaching content?

Pull the other one.

The thing about scheduled class time is that it's the one time people set aside in their day to actually attend to class stuff.  Making the average lazy student responsible for finding the time for class content doesn't strike me as a "good and useful thing".

Will it work?  Can it work?  Is it more than just a passing phase?

I hope so.

I really, really like this idea.