Flipping Online Classrooms with Web 2.0
I found a neat article that
discusses flipping online classrooms with Web 2.0 technologies. The author discusses
the creation of asynchronous workshops built around social environments. He
also discusses how the use of certain tools can maximize student engagement and
participation.
The author used some communication
and writing classes at Miami University of Ohio for his experiment. He incorporated
many Google Apps and other Web 2.0 tools to help students create flexible
learning strategies where they wrote collaboratively and in open public spaces
on the web. I thought that this was a cool new way to look at flipped
classrooms – there doesn’t have to be a physical meeting space for all flipped
classrooms. This two-directional platform helped students mix up data from multiple
sources and they created extremely rich user networks along the way. The web
2.0 tools that were used helped create and foster learner to instructor interactions,
learner to content interactions, and learner-to-learner interactions. The
research shows that asynchronous learning experiences are better suited than
synchronous learning experiences for an online flipped classroom because the
students tend to be more focused on the specific learning tasks. In synchronous
chat rooms, learners interacted more and spent more time working together, but
this quantity of interaction did not equate with the quality of interaction in
an asynchronous environment.
The author set up a problem solving
inquiry based instructional strategy that required five stages:
1.
To create a conducive online learning
environment
2.
To explore a specific theme
3.
To create a question or issue
4.
To design and develop an investigative plan
5.
To reflect on the findings and discuss them with
others
I felt like this was an extremely straightforward
way of designing instruction via Web 2.0 tools. The author touted personalized
feedback, collaborative ‘remixibility’, instructor immediacy, and the feeling
of social presence as critical factors. The author stated that this all created
a culture in which students wanted to participate and felt a high level of
genuine engagement. Another additional benefit was that the users were creating
digital competencies through this learning process and enhancing their overall metacognitive
skills. Students seemed happy to reflect on their personal learning experiences
that involved communicating and collaborating online through these
technological tools. The act of reflection itself was a powerful learning tool
since the students could analyze their personal strengths and weaknesses more
readily. The idea of giving users more control over their own personal learning
processes should be a core element of education, and I am happy to see more
colleges and universities jumping on this bandwagon. I thought that this was a
cool read because this is exactly what we are doing in this classroom!
Check it out if you have time
Cummings, L. (2016). Flipping the
online classroom with web 2.0: The asynchronous workshop. Business and
Professional Communication Quarterly, 79(1), 81-101.
doi:10.1177/2329490615602250
I love to hear this! I’m a big fan of the flipped classroom and this kind of research gives incite to how learning platforms like web 2.0 is going to bring in the new era of learning. I feel like I always have to comment about how I’m not a teacher before I start dissing the system but the teachers have got to get out of the shackles of the classroom and embrace the power of the web. I know they have standards to up hold and all but it seems to me there are enough positive results out there to bring this methodology to mainstream education. Just from your review of this article we can see web 2.0 and flipped classroom scenarios created a culture of participation, high level of engagement, brings digital competencies into the learning process, enhances overall metacognitive skills, and allows for better personal analytical skills. Thanks for sharing such an insightful article! I’ll have it docked and ready for when I find some time for non-assigned materials. The only drawback to learning being so accessible is all the accessibility! I’ve got so much incoming data that it’s hard to keep up with it all.
ReplyDeleteI think that the flipped classroom trend is a bit of a misnomer for what (IMHO) really is the main goal: To promote active learning/student engagement. The premise that we're doing a "flip" and that classroom time = lecture time is faulty. (Also, I had a 'flipped class' in 1997, before it was a thing. I taught in a computer lab, but 50% of the class was supposed to be about topics that required discussion, not computer skills. Rather than discuss f2f in a room not set up for discussion and then push computer practice off to homework time when help was not available, I shifted discussion online and in the classroom was able to help students work on their projects and facilitated a lot of collaborative project work.)
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