A proposed answer for the task of improving student motivation is the Flipped Classroom model and implementing Challenge Based Learning.
Go ahead, flip your classroom in your head. Imagine asking a student to go learn something on his own. Give him the topic of the desired lesson, give him some video to watch and some reading to do. Tell him to come prepared to class with either some questions or problems (ie math) already answered on the topic, recorded notes, or a written reflection. How many students will do it? Our collective experience as teachers informs us that there will always be students who come to class without having adequately prepared. That isn’t my point, or even a new concern that would arise from a flipped classroom. It’s just a reality to be handled appropriately by a teacher and student as it occurs. In my imagination, as I flip my classroom, I would expect the immediate motivational effect to be minimal, but the long term motivational effect to be significant. Being motivated often requires a student to be able to imagine the future benefits of an action, to be able to visual the outcome, and to be able to connect in advance to a feeling of accomplishment or pride. Why do I do the dishes, clean the kitchen, pack my lunch, and load up my coffee maker before I go to bed, even when I’m tired from a long day and just want to crawl under the covers? Because I have experience with how good it feels in the morning to wake up to a clean kitchen, the smell of coffee, and not having to pack a lunch in a hurry before heading out the door. At night, even if I don’t have any immediate benefits in front of me (why not wait, after all?), I can visualize the feeling the next morning. And I have enough experience to know that the evenings I chose NOT to do the work, I regretted it the next morning. Motivation! After a few weeks or, for some, a few months of either regret or satisfaction, students’ motivation will likely increase. One of the goals of flipping a classroom is to provide class time that allows the students and teacher the time to engage in more productive “application” of the concept or lesson. This could be troubleshooting issues a student encountered while frontloading the lesson. As Ramsey Musallam said, student curiosity and those questions they bring us are our best friends. Go ahead and embrace the mess! Another more engaging way to use class time is working collaboratively with other students on a project, hands-on activities and experiments, or presentations. From the flipped classroom model, presumably, this use of class time is more enjoyable, effective for learning, and therefore, more motivating. Challenge Based Learning (CBL) is a collaborative experience involving students, teachers, community members, and sometimes parents. It is akin to PBL (project based learning or problem based learning, depending on your era). Students, usually in teams, learn about real world issues, create an essential question, frame a challenge in which they propose solutions to these problems, form an action plan, execute it, and publish their results. Some of the reported additional benefits from a 6 school pilot CBL were as follows:
In investigating flipped classrooms, I see ideas that I can use to improve our model of it. Our students primarily use district-adopted textbooks in their work. We also create mini-projects based on curriculum. This is a rather one dimensional way to learn. We could incorporate more teacher created video lessons and digital collaboration that could enrich study from home during the week, either meant to give the opportunity for feedback to the teacher or for students to collaborate with one another. I started following links from April Tucker’’s site and found several YouTube videos from Jon Bergmann, Aaron Sams (Edutopia), and Katie Gimbar that I felt had useful tips. CBL might be more challenging to implement for a large, long-term project, but, as was stated in a couple of the guides for CBL, an individual teacher or class can actually accomplish a CBL module in as short as a few weeks. I can most easily imagine working a CBL opportunity into my Social Studies framework. One of the connecting ideas to CBL that especially spoke to me was it’s natural inclusion of what was called Personalized Learning and its four key aspects. These 4 descriptors capture what we often call “voice and choice”, and it is very important to my students.
1 Comment
Dan Parker
4/27/2017 01:19:43 pm
It was interesting to read about your thoughts regarding motivation in the flipped classroom. That is something I hadn't thought about. It seemed like from the chart that we reviewed, that so many of the negative factors regarding student success were improved. I too see the lack on interest but on a baseball field in college I don't have to have them on my team, in a classroom you don't have that option.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Nancy JaminetArchives
December 2017
Categories |