I was reading the Chronicle of Higher Education and stumbled on this article… It’s a Flipping Revolution. The article was very interesting. Flipped Classrooms are slowly becoming more and more popular. I am not sure which buzzword is winning MOOCs or Flipped Classrooms. The concept is not new, but still has not penetrated fully into the classroom. As you can imagine, it is difficult to break tradition. A professor/teacher/instructor walks into a classroom, fires up PowerPoint or the trusty writing utensil, and begins to broadcast a message to the X number of students sitting in the classroom. Students just listen or tune out to the message being sent to them. Message receipt is confirmed through performance on exams. Wow… Just writing those sentences put me back to sleep.
It pains me to think that I am apart of making sure that that sort of transmission still occurs and is working — I work in the educational technology field. How does one make pervasive change in education while not holding a Ph.D.? How can I work to shift the teaching styles of faculty members from broadcast to collaborative? I am going to have to think about this and get back to you. However, I thought I would share this since I find it fascinating.