The silver bullet for teachers to 'flip the classroom'

Nicole Lieberwerth and Yuri Bobbert | November 18, 2021

Back in the day, seventy percent of traditional class time was spent sending a monologue by the teacher to the student. Twenty percent was spent on interaction with students, and the remaining ten percent reflected their learnings. This, only sending, led to distraction and less engaged students. Students turn to their social media addiction with more ideas about their next TikTok video rather than an inspiring learning experience at school. Concepts like “flipping the classroom“ are making an entrance into educational institutes.

What is “flipping the classroom”?According to Cynthia Brame from Vanderbilt University, “Flipping the classroom“ has become something of a buzzword in the last several years [1]. Important publications such as “How 'Flipping' the Classroom can Improve the Traditional Lecture“ describe how the role of the teacher changes and how students are being more engaged by providing small assignments and focusing on the interaction through dialogues and discussion rather than the focus on monologues [2]. Brame continues, “In essence, “flipping the classroom“ means that students gain first exposure to new material outside of class, usually via reading or lecture videos, and then use class time to do the more complicated work of assimilating that knowledge, perhaps through problem-solving, discussion, or debates.“

In terms of Bloom's revised taxonomy (2001), this means that students are doing the lower levels of cognitive work (gaining knowledge, memorize, repeating, listing, deduplication and comprehension) outside of class and focusing on the higher forms of cognitive work (application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) in class, where they have the support of their peers and instructor. This model contrasts from the traditional model in which “first exposure“ occurs via lecture in class, with students assimilating knowledge through homework; thus, the term “flipped classroom.“

Over the years, we have seen Group Support systems used as an instrument to flip the classroom. It enables students to learn, interact equally with professors and teachers, who act more as facilitators of applying the earlier gained knowledge. Collaboration online or offline is possible due to the innovative and scalable cloud technology. Thereby enabling flexibility to work from campus or at home. Traveling or visiting a physical lecture is not needed anymore, which positively influences CO2 emissions.

How can GSS be used to flip the classroom?One of the biggest frustrations in meetings and classrooms is the lack of a structure or agenda. Therefore, with GSS, class time is structured around a central agenda for each lecture in a GSS system. The teacher starts first to determine their overall lecture objective. This objective can be to examine a sensitive topic such as racism at school collectively and determine upfront what to study and how to analyze and what kind of output is desired. For example, an established and scrutinized list of viewpoints about racism at school and how to deal with that. The teacher first asks the students to read a paper at home or watch a Youtube video on the topic for students to prepare, list, a repeat of formulating their viewpoint on the material. In terms of Bloom, this is foundational in learning; read, digest, list, and neurological define basic facts and concepts about the topic.

BRAINSTORM
In the first step of the lecture, the students may be asked to answer the conceptual question “Racism in school.“ This can be a brainstorming step where the students can put forward their opinion and points of view in response to the brainstorming question. The conceptual questions are not asked and answered informally by student volunteers as in traditional lectures; instead, all students must answer the conceptual question, often via handheld personal response systems or apps, which allow students to respond anonymously and will enable the instructor to see and display via the virtual projector class data immediately. If a large portion of the class answers incorrectly, students reconsider and discuss the question plenary or in small groups while the teacher encourages productive discussions. After reflection, chat, and interaction, the students again answer the conceptual brainstorm question. The instructor gives feedback and explains via displaying the outcomes on the “projector.“ During the session, it is a choice to allow participants to see each other's input or do it completely anonymously. The cycle can then be repeated on the same or another topic, with each process typically taking 13-15 minutes. If we use the same questions or data, we coin this “Double-loop learning“ [3]. Double-loop learning allows students to learn first on their insights and previous discussions and reflect and vote in multiple iterations. Hence, the group understands from its collective brain, and incubation takes place.

Note that sensitive topics in behavioral sciences and social sciences like gender neutrality, racism, PTSS treatment, mediation increasingly require 100% anonymous voting, and the system should assure that at all times.

ORDERING
After the brainstorm step, teachers can order, categorize or split the earlier gathered brainstorm data via the Flipboard function. You can compare this to a physical whiteboard where the teacher only writes the input from the class. The students differentiate, organize, relate, question, and test the previously collected viewpoints (Bloom level; analyze). By doing this, group members justify a stand or decision. By arguing, defending, and selecting items, students learn more about evaluating what they have learned, avoiding tunnel vision, and learning about their own bias. In the case of sensitive topics, this step is crucial for students to understand how concepts and constructs relate to each other. By visualizing how connections are associated with ideas via the projector, students learn how to differentiate and better understand root causes. GSS enables discussion viewpoints of the group extensively, and as a result, a better mutual understanding is achieved. Thereby offering a silver bullet to the teacher who facilitates, structures, and documents these lectures.

VOTING
To eventually converge the diverged items, the teacher uses voting. This enables the teacher to converge to final actions, decisions, or future developments. Suppose teachers require the class to examine more quantitative stands. In that case, they can use the voting function by, for example, allocating points to an item (100 points to divide), Choose (multiple options possible), Vote (Yes or No), or Rank (from 1 to 10 or 1 to n) an item. This way, deviations can be discussed, defended, judged, critiqued, weighted, or appraised. They are allowing Blooms' Taxonomy to analyze and evaluate learnings gained from the lower level of the learning pyramid. The teacher sees which participants already submitted and contributed to the class and, via the Projector, displays this step's outcome— allowing them to flip the classroom results, whether online or offline. If certain students did not submit or have an inactive session due to doing something else on the phone, the teacher could see that, allowing them to activate passive students. This Voting step is documented in the system and afterward reported in PDF or Excel (or another format to parse it onto visualization tools or student registrar systems).

Core tasks of the facilitating teacher- Prepare, determine and stick to the agenda.
- Stimulate a “free flow“ discussion.
- Facilitate all students to provide input.
- Clarify everyone's insights and points of view.
- Address complex subjects (elephants in the room).
- Ensure participants stay 'on track' in the discussion.
- Ensure that the response is captured in the GSS system.

6 Benefits of GSS to flip any classroom
1. It can be used both online and physically
2. It works seamlessly with all video conferencing software (such as Zoom/, MS Teams, Meet, WebEx, RingCentral) 3. Super easy to operate for both the teacher as the student
4. Everyone has a voice in generating and prioritizing ideas (action-oriented)
5. Stimulates a high level of involvement from all participants
6. Knows multi-device and browser support

ConclusionBy predefining the classroom agenda upfront and determining classroom outcomes, “Flipping the classroom“ becomes more accessible than ever before. Only ten percent is spent on explaining the purpose of the class and the overall objectives; twenty percent is spent on the moderation of questions and answers, encouraging a free-flowing discussion, and making sure everybody is heard. The majority of the time is now consumed by the student’s answering questions, exchanging viewpoints, and arguing what they have learned.

GSS delivers a stupid simple system for teachers to set up an agenda, run a class, and flip it as well as for the students to be engaged the entire course and the ability to login from any device, wherever they want to. GSS is the silver bullet, the teacher the sniper operating it towards bullseye.

Sources
[1] C. Brame, „ Flipping the classroom,“ Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. , https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/., 2013.
[2] D. Berret, „How ‘Flipping’ the Classroom Can Improve the Traditional Lecture,“ 19 Feb 2012. [Online]. Available: https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-flipping-the-classroom-can-improve-the-traditional-lecture/.
[3] C. Argyris, „Double-loop learning, teaching, and research.,“ Acad. Manag. 1(2), vol. 1(2), pp. 206-218, 2002.