Individualize Instruction

One of the great advantages of a Flipped Classroom is the ability to individualize instruction. With my Programming 2 students, they came from four different Programming 1 teachers. Each teacher had a different style and skill set that makes teaching "down the middle" very difficult. Mix in a few students from AP and others who this is what they do at home versus a hobby and it is by definition a hot mess. 

So, I have tackled down the realm of individualized instruction to try and give all the students what I can to benefit them. This has taken me back to content creation overload to try and meet every student where they are at. 

Schoology allows you the ability to go in and set each assignment individually. This is a great feature but there still is the question on how you give students what they need and a schedule. For that, I have built a (very ugly) spreadsheet that falls into a rather nice Word document mail merger. From there, they receive their schedule for the week along with expectations, goals and due dates. 

From my own sanity perspective, I have not found the most efficient way to grade these yet. The time spent grading is up for sure. Also, the urgency of grading quickly is up to provide as efficient feedback as possible. 

With programming, it is nice at this point that a lot of concepts are tying together nicely, which reduces the amount of work needed. This week, it only took me about 2 hours to prepare everything for the week for the students. (May have taken less without the head cold, let's be honest). 

So, Schoology, Word mail merger, an Excel Spreadsheet and a local Starbucks to complete your work on a cold and gray Chicago morning. That's all you need to be successful in creating an Individualized Instruction Environment. 

It's Been Awhile

It's been awhile since I last published to this blog, which means one thing: The flipped classroom is indeed the time consumer that it was advertised to be. I would like to recap some of the highlights of the experience to date:

• I quickly gave up running three preps with it because of the time demands. I reduced it to two which became relatively manageable.
• On average, it took about 6 hours AFTER the recording to prepare a week. The syntax followed:
• At home:
• Student would watch a video
• Take a checking for understanding quiz (hopefully).
• In class:
• Brief 5 minute review about the material.
• Work with the material in class.
• Making sure teacher is readily available during work period.
• So do the math:
• 2 courses
• 18 weeks a semester
• 6 hours of additional content preparation.
• 6 * 18 * 2 = 216 additional hours of preparation and content creation
• 216 hours/24 hours = 9 full days of times per semester of additional preparation.
• So at this point, I would like to thank my forgiving and understanding fiance for being understanding and supportive.

Some conclusions:

• You can't go back: Long after the students were used to the flipped classroom model, one day I tried a half hour lecture and it failed miserably. The students got used to the flipped style and the lecture ended up producing the worst retention of the year.
• Your A's will not increase, your B's and C's will though: Through this model, I only had 4 total students get F's. Compare the stats below for my Visual Basic course:

Grade:	2013-14 (Not flipped)	2014015 (Flipped)
A	14 (24.1%)	21 (36.2%)
B	7 (12.1%)	26 (44.8%)
C	6 (10.3%)	8 (13.8%)
D	3 (5.1%)	2 (3.4%)
F	4 (6.9%)	1 (1.7%)
Population:	34	58

The AP Course had one additional F. No previous statistics to show for this. Out of 18, 1 F. The rest had C's or above.

So all in all, while the initial work is a tremendous effort, there is proof that the results do make significant gains in the class. I am currently in the process of flipping two more classrooms and want to continue to encourage everyone out there trying it that the results are highly worth it!