Current Trends
Flipping Your Classroom
Flipping the classroom involves the use of a blended learning teaching model, where technology is used to provide students with the learning material outside of class, so that classroom time can be spent on interactive exercises and activities. Some phrase this as 鈥渓ecture at home, practice at school.鈥� Many consider the flipped classroom the best of both worlds: using classroom time for tasks that work best in person and using remote time for tasks that work best online.
Ways to Flip Your Classroom
- Students read material, watch screencasts/multimedia, and take basic knowledge quizzes outside of class.
- Class time is used for review, Q & A sessions, discussions, presentations, and hands-on practice time; can focus class time on games, experiments, performance arts, etc鈥�
- Students can teach each other by making their own videos and posting documents and comments online and/or in the classroom.
- Quiz students before class time to determine baseline knowledge and problem areas.
- Students can take the same quiz before and then after clas to measure improved learning.
- Consider using groups and/or learning/topics stations in the classroom.
- Screencasting is one way to easily create video lecture material.
Advantages of Flipping
- Students can review the instruction repeatedly and at their own pace.
- The flipped format can provide students with more control over their learning (where and how they learn).
- During practice in class, students can refer back to recordings and other content material before asking for one-on-one help.
- Students that have excused absences from class due to illness, bad weather, etc鈥� can stay on track.
- Instructors can use the same content in multiple classes, over multiple semesters.
- Provides students more time for聽mastery聽of the course material.
- With the widespread use of artificial intelligence in education, the flipped classroom is ideal for using in-person time for activities and assignments where you want to control or limit the use of AI.
For further information, you can check out:
- 贰诲耻肠补耻蝉别鈥檚听
- The Official Peer Instruction Blog鈥荣&苍产蝉辫;
One Example of a Flipped Structure
In the example above, students do all of their reading and multimedia activities outside of the classroom. They also do a basic assignment, such as find three articles to share with the class or compose three questions to share with the class. This can be posted in advance on a discussion board. Students are also expected to take a preliminary quiz to determine understanding of the topic. Outside of class, instructors must make sure that the necessary materials are loaded and up to date, and also monitor the quiz results to note concepts that need further explanation.
In the classroom, students, either as a whole-class or individually, discuss/debate the sources or questions uploaded earlier. Then they take an 鈥渆xit鈥� quiz to measure improvement in learning (this quiz can be taken in class or outside of class). In class, the instructor provides examples and further explanation of the material as needed and also facilitates the discussions. As appropriate, the instructor can also meet with students individually or in groups, monitoring any learning stations. Finally, the instructor does any outstanding grading and opens additional practice material as needed.
Cautions
- To work well, students must come to class prepared. This can lead to some student resistance, as they must do their assignments consistently in order to engage in the material in front of their peers. Consider allowing students one 鈥渇ree鈥� day, where they don鈥檛 have to actively participate in the in-class activities?
- The online materials must be thorough, manageable, and understandable since students will likely be on their own for their first contact with the content.
- Consistency is key- students should be comfortable with what to expect (and what is expected of them) from class to class.
- Bias is a possible issue in some flipped classrooms- for maximum achievement, students must have regular and reliable access to the online material. In addition, students must also feel comfortable actively participating in class (self-confidence).
- It can be difficult to broadly evaluate the effectiveness of the flipped classroom concept because every flipped course can be different.
Resources
For Content:
- University Libraries: ebooks, streaming media, eReserves, Open Educational Resources (OER), Zotero for citations
- Khan Academy
- Canvas Studio for video: can do webcam video and screen recording (screencasting)
- The University Teaching & Learning Commons can record more professional video and/or provide a lightboard
- Programs such as Google Docs and Scrible allow document markup
For Activities and Assignments:
- Canvas Studio: allows video comments and embedded quizzes in video
- Canvas Groups
- Canvas Collaborations
- Canvas Quizzes, Discussions, and Assignments
As always, if choosing publisher material, make sure to confirm with your publisher rep that the content you select is accessible for all students.
Tips for managing large enrollment classes
Many faculty struggle with how to manage workloads and meaningfully engage with students in large enrollment classes. This document provides some tips on how to use technology to help engage students, streamline workflow, and even successfully increase enrollments for large classes.
Syllabus Quiz
Write an FAQ into your syllabus with answers to commonly asked questions. Then create a syllabus quiz to reduce beginning of semester emails. You can also create an 鈥淎sk the Instructor鈥� discussion board where students can post course-related questions. You can then encourage students to answer each other鈥檚 questions. These efforts should reduce the number of emails you receive.
Flipped Classroom Model
The Flipped Model can be used in two ways: to add more active learning time to a large enrollment class; and/or to increase student enrollment without increasing time spent in class. A flipped model class moves the traditional lecture to an online format (readings, videos, auto-graded quizzes) and then uses class time for more active learning, such as group work, problem solving, and additional practice. The flipped model used in a large enrollment course helps keep students active and engaged and provides more time for individual students to receive help (by team members and the instructor).
The flipped model can also be used if you are looking for a way to increase enrollments in a course. For example, maybe you normally offer a class that meets three times a week for 50 mins each time. You can use the flipped model to offer three different sections of a course, but only meet with each section once a week and have them do work online the rest of the week. This way, you are still only holding three face to face sessions, but you are offering three separate sections (and enrollments can increase from 25 in one section to 75 in three). Realistically, offering three separate sections is still going to increase your workload compared to only offering one, but the flipped model can drastically reduce the amount of additional work compared to if you offered three sections in traditional format.
Two final important points to consider on the flipped model: one is that this model does require more active learning on behalf of the students, so students need to be prepared to do work on their own and come to class prepared for more interactive activities; the other is that some instructors rely very heavily on video for the online portion of the class. If you do this, please remember that all videos need to be captioned to be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Team-Based Learning (TBL)
The TBL model is similar to the flipped classroom, except students work in teams of 5 to 7. Before class, students complete readings or other activities. In class, students take a readiness assurance test (RAT) individually and then take the same test with their teams. Both group and individual scores contribute to the student鈥檚 grades. Teams can appeal questions they got incorrect, but must make a convincing argument by engaging with the course materials and other relevant resources and defending their choices. While the TBL model is highly structured, instructors have adapted this model to fit their needs of their students (see https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/team-based-learning/).
Groups/Discussions
Managing discussion boards can be one of the most time consuming tasks in any online course, but especially in a large enrollment class. One solution is to create group discussions where each group assigns one person to post on behalf of the whole group. The group members have a full discussion within their individual groups, and then one person from each group posts a summary to the whole class discussion. This way, you can look in on the groups to make sure the students are talking, but you don鈥檛 have to read every post by every student. You concentrate on the summary posts made to the whole class discussion boards. This method works best when you set up Canvas to give all group members the same grade, since you鈥檒l be primarily grading on summary posts instead of all the individual posts.
For more information see:
Quizzes
Quizzes, especially ones that auto-grade, are a great way to test students on fundamentals without adding extra work time for instructors. However, there are some steps you should consider taking to reduce the risk of students cheating on these kinds of quizzes. Here are a few recommendations:
1. Put timers on your quizzes. For questions that can be auto-graded by the Canvas system (multiple choice, true/false, matching, etc), in most cases students should not need more than a minute per question; more than this and they are likely to have time to look for the answers online and in their textbooks.
2. Release feedback after all students have completed the quiz. Canvas allows you to control when students receive feedback on quiz submissions (which questions they got right/wrong, correct answers). In Canvas, select the check boxes to let students see their quiz responses and to let students see correct answers, but then where it asks for you to enter a date for when students can view this feedback, make sure to select a date after when the quiz is due.
3. Create your quizzes using question banks. Question banks are larger pools of questions you create, and then you tell the quiz to pull a certain number of random questions from the question bank. Because it is far less likely that two students will receive the same set of questions, it reduces the benefit of students working together and/or sharing answers for the quiz. Question banks do take more time upfront to set up, but they usually don鈥檛 require any additional work once created (unless your quiz material changes very frequently).
Additionally, you can use practice quizzes in Canvas to give students practice and individual feedback before the graded quiz. Canvas also has adaptive release rules you can apply where students have to make a minimum grade before moving on,
or students who make below a minimum grade can have additional study material released. For more information on this, see the Canvas guides on prerequisites and requirements:
Rubrics
You can create rubrics in Canvas and apply those rubrics for grading on assignments. Rubrics may seem like extra work at first, because you have to take the time to create the rubrics and then fill out the grades on the rubric for each student. However, in the long term rubrics can help with efficiency in the class, because rubrics:
1. ensure that students are graded consistently and on the same criteria, and
2. make clear exactly what criteria you grade for and how the student performed on each criterion.
This reduces the amount of individualized feedback you need to leave for each student (though it should not completely replace individual feedback), and reduces the follow-up emails you get from students questioning why they received a certain grade on an assignment. For more information on setting up rubrics:
A Few Final Options for Managing Large Enrollment Classes
Attendance Tool: each Canvas course has the Roll-Call Attendance tool. Students are marked present or absent by clicking on their name in the tool. It may be unrealistic for the instructor to mark students present, one option is you can load the attendance tool on a tablet before class and then have students check themselves in as they walk into the classroom. The key to this is the instructor needs to be standing by the tablet to make sure each student only clicks themselves present and not a friend as well. You will need to go through after class and mark the absences yourself.
For more information:
Clickers: you can use a tool like iClickers for graded or Canvas polls for non-graded immediate student feedback- this encourages student engagement without giving you something else to grade. It’s important to know that ITS provides limited support for iClickers, so you will want to contact your iClicker rep for most support.
For more information:
Stock Responses: As you work your way through teaching a course that you offer frequently, you might want to maintain a bank of stock answers that you find yourself frequently using in emails/discussions/paper feedback. Then you can copy and paste common answers/feedback, so you don鈥檛 find yourself typing the same information from scratch over and over. The important thing here is that stock feedback should never completely replace individualized feedback to students. For example, when grading papers you can use the stock feedback, but then provide individualized summary feedback at the end.
Apps for Education
There are far too many educational apps available to download for me to list them all. This link is simply takes you to a list of the apps I have personally tried and found useful. Some are free and some cost a small amount. If you know of other apps you think would be beneficial to your colleagues, please email me the info and I鈥檒l add them to the list!
Presentation/Screencasting
| Explain Everything | 鈥渄esign, screencasting, and interactive whiteboard tool that lets you annotate, animate, narrate, import, and export; create slides; add new or existing photos and videos; import PDF, PPT, DOC, XLS, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and RTF files from Evernote, Dropbox, Box, GDrive, WebDAV, Email, iTunes; export MP4 movies, PDF documents, PNG images, or XPL project files directly from your iPad and iPhone鈥� |
| Prezi | 鈥渃reate, present, and watch prezis prezis from any location; zoom into any detail or pull out to show the big picture; professionally designed selection of color themes and templates鈥� |
| 鈥淪tart with an Apple-designed theme and add text, images, charts, tables, and shapes with just a few taps. Highlight your data with interactive bar, column, scatter, and bubble charts. Present on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch; or use video mirroring to present on an HDTV, and preview your slides and notes on your device using the Presenter Display.鈥� | |
| 鈥淪howMe allows you to record voice-over whiteboard tutorials and share them online; Drop in images onto the whiteboard.鈥� | |
| Screen Chomp | 鈥渁 simple doodling board, markers, and one-click sharing tools make spreading your ideas and know-how easy and fun! Just 鈥� Record It. Sketch It. Share It. 鈥� to create a sharable, replay-able video that tells your story clearly.鈥� |
| PPT | You can download mobile versions of most of the MS 365 tools, including PowerPoint. |
Video
| ‘s Slideshow Creator | 鈥淐reate and share videos using your phone鈥檚 pictures and video clips.鈥� |
| 鈥渁dd a video filter, animated title, and soundtrack to any clip; choose from 14 trailer templates with stunning graphics and original scores; select the best videos and photos for your trailer with the help of animated drop zones鈥� |
Blogging
| Blogger | 鈥渃ompose a post that you can save to draft or immediately publish; view list of your saved and published posts; switch account/blog if you have more than one; embed an image from the gallery, or by taking a picture directly from the app; add labels and location info鈥� |
| 鈥淢anage your WordPress blog or website on the go, from your iOS device: view your stats, moderate comments, create and edit posts and pages, and upload media. All you need is a WordPress.com blog or a self-hosted WordPress.org site running 3.6 or higher.鈥� |
Timelines
| 鈥淭imeline Maker helps you display a list of events in chronological order; timelines can be shared by email, saved to Photo library and printed; you can stack up to 8 events per timeline entry, four different event designs, combine image and text, year, month and day based timelines; create timelines based on your own base and sort order; choose background image from photo library鈥� | |
| 鈥渆nter your events, add your media, and Timeline 3D will create a timeline automatically; present your timelines full screen and with 3D perspective; export slideshows to PowerPoint and Keynote; add images, movies, or PDFs to events鈥� |
Organization
| 鈥渃reate boards to organize anything you鈥檙e working on; use them solo or invite colleagues, friends, and family to work together; write your ideas down on Trello cards and arrange them in lists on your boards; add details to your cards such as: checklists to keep track of to-dos; comments to update your co-workers; photos, videos, and PDFs鈥� |
Open Educational Resources
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free resources that can supplement teaching and learning needs. OER can include many different kinds of content, including lesson plans, learning modules, videos, and interactive experiences. As the cost of traditional textbooks continues to rise, 91探花平台 and in particular University Libraries encourage instructors to explore both using existing and creating new open educational resources as alternatives to traditional textbooks.
Although there are many definitions of Open Educational Resources (OER), all generally agree that they are teaching and learning materials freely available within the public domain for everyone to use. provides a good working definition: Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student or self-learner. Examples of OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world.
Why Use OER?
Those who most clearly benefit from using OER are the learners- both in cost savings and in increasing equal (and even enhanced) access to content. Learners can also benefit from an increased variety of resources, which can appeal to different learning styles. However, instructors can also benefit from OER by developing a more collaborative approach to teaching, through contributing one鈥檚 own resources as well as using existing resources. Additionally, contributing to OER can gain instructors additional professional recognition as well a means of reaching new learners.
Considerations
There are several factors to take into consideration when considering developing open educational resources:
- Student Access: Consider what device(s) students will use to access the materials, and will that create any barriers? Do the materials meet all accessibility guidelines?
- Sustainability and Maintenance: Using OER requires instructors to make sure links still work and materials are still current. Searching for adequate materials and planning activities around them can take significantly more time than if using a traditional textbook with recommended activities.
- Justification: Make sure that you select materials that align with your learning objectives and are necessary for the attainment of those objectives; there should be a clear reason for including all materials.
- Variety: Ideally, you should aim to incorporate a wide variety of resources and content, such as text, video, graphics, and methods for students to work interactively. Interactive components can be activities that require students to create, remix, evaluate, or simulate.
Copyright
The Creative Commons has created a licensing system to address Open Educational Resources. Please see here for more information: . The licenses allow content creators to retain copyright while at the same time allowing others to non-commercially copy, distribute, remix and build upon your work. Here is a summary of the licensing options available to you through Creative Commons:
Where to Start
University Libraries
Jackson Library has an in-depth site on OER, located here: . In addition, the Library Liaison for your department can assist you with navigating the many resources available through the Library, including journal articles, e-books, and videos.
Academic Technology Consultants (ATS)
Your ATS can assist you with loading your course resources into Canvas and advise on what kind of resources (text, video, etc鈥�) might best convey specific learning objectives.
Digital Media Commons
The Digital Media Commons (DMC), located in the Library, has many multimedia resources at your disposal, including a 3D workshop and a professional video studio you can use to record your own videos.
Additional Resources:
- 鈥� 鈥淲e work with the finest producers of instructional content in the world and gather their best work together especially for you. Then we ensure the resources are carefully described and fully indexed because we want you to be able to find exactly what you need, when you need it.鈥�
- Project Gutenberg is a collection of books that are in the public domain.
- Khan Academy is a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere. All of the site鈥檚 resources are available to anyone.
- Thecourses of the Massachussets Institute of Technology
- Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University.
- 聽The MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching) collection is provided by the California State University Center for Distributed Learning and consists of tens of thousands of discipline-specific learning materials, learning exercises, and Content Builder webpages, together with associated comments, and personal collections, all intended to enhance the teaching experience of using a learning material.
Presentation Software
There are many software options for students who need to create presentations for class. Some of these tools create screencasts (recordings of your computer screen), some are app based from your mobile device, but all provide students with a way to create a multimedia rich experience for the viewer.
Online, asynchronous presentations can be more difficult to design because you are not there to interact in person with the students. Your content and design must allow for this lack of spontaneous interaction.
If you would like to learn more about easy ways to create a more effective online presentation, see .
PowerPoint
PowerPoint is available to faculty, students, and staff via . PowerPoint is a powerful presentation tool that uses a slide format. You can:
- Apply actions to objects
- Present Live, which creates a QR code students can scan to then view and navigate your presentation on their own screens while you are presenting live.鈥�
- Rehearse with Coach, which provides helpful tips on your presentation, such as if you say 鈥渦m鈥� too many times.鈥�
- Enable in Present mode.鈥�
- Designer (layout and design suggestions)鈥�
- Check (and fix) Accessibility
Audacity
Audacity is a free download from the Web and is fairly simple tool to use to create basic audio-only files.
Google Slides
Google slides is part of the Google suite, but you will need to create your Slides in a personal Google account. Slides is very similar to PowerPoint, but is entirely browser-based.
Screencasting Tools for Recording Desktop
Screencasts are video recordings of your computer screen. Screencasts can also incorporate voice-over narrations and annotations. You can use MS Teams to record a screencast and you can also use Canvas Studio. Another example of an online tool is .
Prezi
Prezi is an online presentation tool that works from a single canvas instead of traditional linear slides. With Prezi you can zoom in, out and across images to create unified, visually impressive presentations. Prezi is free and you can store your presentations online.
Generative Artificial Intelligence
In late November of 2022, an AI chatbot tool called ChatGPT became available online and immediately began making waves in both academic and private sectors. By February 2023, Chat GPT was pervasive in virtually all levels of education. Chat GPT is now one of many AI chatbots that are quickly and in many cases, quietly changing the landscape of both education and the rest of the world. Follow the link below to find out what these tools can do, their benefits, their limitations, and how this affects higher education.
More Training
105