The Inverted Classroom Model: The 2nd German ICM-Conference – Proceedings 9783486781274, 9783486741858

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The Inverted Classroom Model The 2nd German ICM-Conference – Proceedings Prof. Dr. Jürgen Handke Marburg University

Natalie Kiesler

Marburg University

Leonie Wiemeyer Marburg University

Oldenbourg Verlag München

Editor: Johannes Breimeier Production editor: Tina Bonertz Cover picture: Authors Cover design: hauser lacour Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the German National Library The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. © 2013 Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH Rosenheimer Straße 143, 81671 München, Germany www.degruyter.com/oldenbourg Part of De Gruyter Printed in Germany This paper is resistant to aging (DIN/ISO 9706). ISBN 978-3-486-74185-8 eISBN 978-3-486-78127-4

Contents Preface The Authors

XI XIII

I

Recent Developments in ICM Implementation

1

1

The Inverted Classroom: Where to Go from Here Jörn Loviscach

3

1.1

Introduction ................................................................................................................ 3

1.2

The ICM and educational research ............................................................................. 4

1.3

Video types and video content.................................................................................... 5

1.4

Video style .................................................................................................................. 7

1.5

Additional online elements ......................................................................................... 8

1.6

Activities in the classroom ......................................................................................... 9

1.7

MOOC-wrapping...................................................................................................... 10

1.8

Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 10

2

Beyond a Simple ICM Jürgen Handke

2.1

ICM-based teaching and learning ............................................................................. 15

2.2

Towards mastery learning ........................................................................................ 16

2.3

MOOCs .................................................................................................................... 19

3

Activating Students by Inverting and Shuffling the Classroom – Experiences from Employing ICM and I²CM Clemens Möller

15

23

3.1

Introduction .............................................................................................................. 24

3.2

Abstract thinking as a major challenge to students ................................................... 24

VI

Contents

3.3

Experiences from implementing the Inverted Classroom ........................................ 27

3.4

Discussion ................................................................................................................ 31

4

Experiences with the Implementation of an Inverted Classroom Course to Promote Key Competences Athanasios Vassiliou

35

4.1

Initial situation .......................................................................................................... 35

4.2

The AWE-class as a blended learning course ........................................................... 36

4.3

The Inverted Classroom Model in the AWE-class ................................................... 37

4.4

Description of the learning materials used ............................................................... 38

4.5

Advantages of the ICM in comparison to the blended learning concept .................. 40

II

Phase 1 of the Inverted Classroom Model: Content Delivery

43

5

Learning by Contribution – Using Wikis in Higher Education Udo Bleimann & Robert Löw

45

5.1

Introduction – from Inverted Classroom to Learning by Contribution .................... 45

5.2

The wiki lecture – our approach ............................................................................... 46

5.3

Using wikis – a short overview ................................................................................ 49

5.4

A view into the wiki – the results ............................................................................. 51

5.5

Outcomes of the wiki lectures .................................................................................. 54

5.6

Lessons learned – summary and outlook .................................................................. 56

6

The VLC Video Strategy Jürgen Handke

59

6.1

Introduction .............................................................................................................. 59

6.2

Quantity assurance and beyond ................................................................................ 60

6.3

Video integration and video types ............................................................................ 61

6.4

Quality assurance...................................................................................................... 67

6.5

Video production ...................................................................................................... 69

6.6

Why YouTube? ......................................................................................................... 72

6.7

Summary .................................................................................................................. 74

7

Using Videos in the Linguistics Classroom Natalie Kiesler

7.1

77

The ICM in linguistics classes at Philipps-University of Marburg ........................... 77

Contents

VII

7.2

Why use videos and the ICM? .................................................................................. 78

7.3

Video types for the linguistics classroom ................................................................. 83

7.4

Reorganization of the class time ............................................................................... 89

7.5

Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 90

8

Flipping Professional Training in Higher Education Didactics – Proposing an Open Video Platform Oliver Tacke

93

8.1

Flipping professional training at university .............................................................. 93

8.2

Opportunities and challenges of a video platform dedicated to training in higher education didactics ........................................................................................ 94

8.3

A brief proposal ........................................................................................................ 96

8.4

Concluding thoughts ................................................................................................. 97

III

Phase 2 of the Inverted Classroom Model: In-Class Activities

101

9

Tutor of the Day – A New Didactic Concept for the Practice Phase of ICM-Based Teaching Anne Günther

103

9.1

Development of the Tutor of the Day concept........................................................ 103

9.2

Application ............................................................................................................. 104

9.3

Skills ....................................................................................................................... 107

9.4

Sample exercise ...................................................................................................... 108

9.5

Students’ evaluation of the Tutor of the Day concept............................................. 110

9.6

Teachers’ evaluation of the Tutor of the Day concept ............................................ 110

9.7

Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 110

10

Designing In-Class Activities in the Inverted Classroom Model Christian Spannagel & Janna Spannagel

113

10.1

The ICM is not ‘video learning’ ............................................................................. 113

10.2

Method 1: Think – Pair – Share ............................................................................. 114

10.3

Method 2: The Active Auditorium .......................................................................... 115

10.4

Method 3: Lecture games ....................................................................................... 117

10.5

Putting it all together .............................................................................................. 118

10.6

Conclusion and outlook .......................................................................................... 119

Contents

VIII 11

Clicker-Happy: Audience Response Systems as an Interface between Pre-Class Preparation and In-Class Session Leonie Wiemeyer

121

11.1

What is an audience response system? ................................................................... 121

11.2

Application of ARSs in teaching ............................................................................ 123

11.3

Benefits and disadvantages of audience response systems ..................................... 125

11.4

Audience response systems in the Inverted Classroom .......................................... 127

11.5

Conclusion and outlook .......................................................................................... 132

IV

Implementation of the ICM in High School

135

12

Flipped Learning in the Science Classroom Brian E. Bennett

137

12.1

Problems in my classroom...................................................................................... 137

12.2

Conditioning students in a traditional classroom .................................................... 138

12.3

Introducing videos to the science classroom .......................................................... 139

12.4

Unexpected initial results ....................................................................................... 140

12.5

The Personalized System of Instruction ................................................................. 140

12.6

Starting fresh – rethinking my approach to Flipped Instruction ............................. 141

12.7

Inquiry learning – examples and applications ........................................................ 141

12.8

Project-based learning – examples and applications .............................................. 142

12.9

Changing grading practices in a mastery learning environment ............................. 143

12.10 Student response to mastery learning ..................................................................... 144 12.11 Implications for future schools ............................................................................... 144 13

Inverting the History Classroom – A First-Hand Report Daniel Bernsen

147

13.1

Inverting the high school classroom ....................................................................... 147

13.2

From teacher controlled lessons to student controlled learning .............................. 149

13.3

How to start flipping a history classroom and what to do within the lesson at school .................................................................................................................. 150

13.4

Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 153

Contents 14

Inverting a Competence-Based EFL Classroom – A Model for Advanced Learner Activation? Dirk Weidmann

IX

155

14.1

The emergence of the German national standards of education and its impacts on contemporary foreign language teaching ........................................................... 156

14.2

Learning-task schemes as long-term planning tools ............................................... 157

14.3

Learner activation in a learning-task environment ................................................. 160

14.4

Ten steps towards establishing a learner-centred ICM within a learning-task environment ...................................................................................... 163

14.5

Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 169

References

173

Index

183

Preface When the 1st German Inverted Classroom Model Conference took place in 2012, the organizers thought that it may have been the first and last conference of this kind: Too few teachers seemed to be familiar with this model in the first place and only a tiny fragment of them would actually apply this model to their own teaching scenarios. However, when we saw the list of registered participants for the 2013 conference and eventually met them, we were overwhelmed by the large number of teachers from both high schools and tertiary institutions who not only wanted to find out about this teaching and learning concept but were already using it. Consequently, the focus of the 2nd German Inverted Classroom Model Conference from which this conference volume resulted was no longer the “installation” of the Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) but fine adjustments in the actual application of it. This shift of emphasis can nicely be seen in the key phrases that are associated with the two conferences. Whereas in 2012, our American colleagues Aaron Sams and Dan Spencer coined the sentences “The knowledge is on the Web and no longer just in the teacher’s mind!” and “Do I need the video perfect or by Tuesday?” and thus set the focus on video production and the self-guided online phase of the ICM, the 2013 goal was different. As Brian Bennett, our 2013 guest from the United States put it “We do not demonize failure!” and “Give the classroom back to the kids.” The conference now focused on new approaches towards organizing the in-class phase and – what was totally ignored in 2012 – an additional phase of testing in a mastery learning approach. So what was new in 2013? First of all, the ICM did not have to be explained anymore. Whereas Jürgen Handke and his team had to outline the central principles of the ICM in the opening talk in 2012 and Anna Maria Schäfer summarized their main findings in her 2012 contribution to the conference proceedings, this time, introductory remarks or specific explanations were no longer required. The ICM had reached a status of being accepted as an important contribution to solving the specific challenges of teaching and learning in the 21st century. This is reflected in the conference contributions which are part of this volume. Even though all three central aspects of the ICM are addressed, (1) content production and delivery, (2) testing, and (3) the in-class phase, there has been a shift away from mere content production towards an expansion of the model as well as a move towards fine adjustments of the three components. The first section of these conference proceedings provides an overview of these recent developments and the implementation of advanced models of the ICM. In the second section, modes of content production and delivery are discussed, while in the third section the organization of in-class activities are in the focus of the discussion. Finally, the fourth section features first-hand reports of ICM implementation in high school settings.

Preface

XII

This year’s ICM conference created a forum for the exchange of theories, ideas and bestpractice tips for the implementation of the Inverted Classroom Model. This was made possible by a fantastic team – Medya Durak, Isabell Hubert, Swenna Kuis, Jennifer Floyd, Dr. Peter Franke, Eva-Marie Großkurth, Cornelius Reiser, Anna Maria Schäfer, Annett Vömel, Tabea Weiß, Svenja Wissmann, and Sabrina Zeaiter. Their hard work, motivation and commitment were vital to the success of the conference. We are also very grateful to Jennifer Floyd for the patient and thorough proofreading of the articles in this volume. Let us end this preface with a short anecdote which illustrates how important new ways of content delivery, such as the online video-based content within an ICM can be: A few hours before conference start, the following comment was posted as a reaction to our YouTube video ‘E-Education on the Virtual Linguistics Campus: The Inverted Classroom Mastery Model’: This is an enhanced Modified Keller Paradigm ([used] in the USA in select univs in late 70s and early 80s)--Brillant. 1 In fact, our subscriber Christophe Clugston was right. The Keller-paradigm, which was introduced during the 1960s as a form of programmed instruction, includes a set of key features some of which are reflected in the ICM, for example: • Students proceed through a course at their own pace. • Students demonstrate mastery before proceeding to the next unit. Even though content delivery was largely text-based at that time rather than based on video or multimedia, the Keller paradigm 2 can be seen as an early foundation of the Inverted Classroom Mastery Model introduced at our 2013 conference. But what is more important, without our freely accessible online material no-one would have noticed the similarity at all. Thus, making content available online is not only a must for any variant of the ICM but it also leads to a level of quality assurance never encountered before. And what about 2014? The great thing about our ICM conference is that we do not know because the ICM affords such great freedom to teachers. No-one could predict the direction that was eventually taken at the 2013 conference. We were all amazed by the different approaches towards the three central components of the ICM and we were delighted to learn how innovatively teachers from across the country have applied new methods of inclass teaching. Thus, we cannot make any predictions for 2014. However, one aspect will probably not only remain the same but will also be strengthened: The ICM will continue to establish itself as a suitable model for coping with the challenges of 21st century teaching and learning. Jürgen Handke, Natalie Kiesler, Leonie Wiemeyer Marburg, July 2013 _________________ 1

Quoted from http://youtu.be/opdljbIixD8; last accessed on 17/07/2013.

2

cf. Keller, Fred. S. 1968. Good-Bye, Teacher …. In: Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis I: 79-89.

The Authors Prof. Dr. Jürgen Handke Philipps-Universität Marburg Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Wilhelm-Röpke-Str. 6D 35032 Marburg E-Mail: [email protected] Lectures online: http://www.youtube.com/linguisticsmarburg Website: http://www.linguistics-online.com Natalie Kiesler, M.A. Philipps-Universität Marburg Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Wilhelm-Röpke-Str. 6D 35032 Marburg E-Mail: [email protected] Leonie Wiemeyer Philipps-Universität Marburg Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Wilhelm-Röpke-Str. 6D 35032 Marburg E-Mail: [email protected] or [email protected] Brian E. Bennett 56198 Quince Rd South Bend, IN, USA 46619 E-Mail: [email protected] Website: www.brianbennett.org Twitter: @bennettscience Daniel Bernsen, StD Fachberatung Geschichte im Schulaufsichtsbezirk Koblenz Eichendorff-Gymnasium Friedrich-Ebert-Ring 26-30 56068 Koblenz E-Mail: [email protected]

XIV Prof. Dr. Udo Bleimann Hochschule Darmstadt aiDa - Institut für Angewandte Informatik Darmstadt Haardtring 100 64295 Darmstadt E-Mail: [email protected] Website: www.fbi.h-da.de/~u.bleimann Dr. Anne Günther Philipps-Universität Marburg Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Wilhelm-Röpke-Str. 6D 35032 Marburg E-Mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb10/iaa/institut/personal/hoyera Prof. Dr. Jörn Loviscach Fachochschule Bielefeld FB Ingenieurwissenschaften und Mathematik Lectures online: http://www.j3L7h.de/videos.html E-Mail: [email protected] Dr. Robert Löw Hochschule Darmstadt aiDa - Institut für Angewandte Informatik Darmstadt Haardtring 100 64295 Darmstadt E-Mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.aida.h-da.de/organisation/index.html Prof. Dr. Clemens Möller Life Sciences Faculty Albstadt-Sigmaringen University of Applied Sciences D-72488 Sigmaringen E-Mail: [email protected] Website: http://about.me/cmoeller Oliver Tacke Projekt teach4TU Technische Universität Braunschweig Bültenweg 74/75 38106 Braunschweig E-Mail: [email protected] Website: https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/teach4tu/team/tacke

The Authors

The Authors Prof. Dr. Christian Spannagel University of Education Heidelberg Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science Im Neuenheimer Feld 561 69120 Heidelberg E-Mail: [email protected] Lectures online: http://wiki.zum.de/PH_Heidelberg Janna Spannagel University of Education Heidelberg Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science Im Neuenheimer Feld 561 69120 Heidelberg E-Mail: [email protected] Athanasios Vassiliou Freie Universität Berlin Center for Digital Systems (CeDiS) E-Learning, E-Research, Multimedia Ihnestr. 24 14195 Berlin (Germany) E-Mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.cedis.fu-berlin.de/cedis/mitarbeiter/beschaeftigte/avassiliou.html Dirk Weidmann E-Mail: [email protected] Website: http://lernhelfer.wordpress.com

XV

I

Recent Developments in ICM Implementation

In recent years, the Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) has been implemented at higher education institutions across Germany and world-wide. For many teachers, the ICM conference held in Marburg was a starting point towards ICM-based teaching. For others, it provided a forum for the exchange of ideas and methods as well as first-hand experience reports from teachers who were already applying the ICM in their teaching. Jörn Loviscach has been using the ICM in his lectures for several years. In his article in this volume, he focuses on the application of the ICM in technology and science education, specifically on the production and use of videos. He also describes several video types and recording styles in detail. Implementing the ICM also entails modifying it to suit the students’ and lecturers’ needs. In the case of large classes, it can be necessary to resort to additional methods and media to ensure that students are working with the materials. One such measure is the introduction of formative assessment. This is discussed by Jürgen Handke in his article on enhancing the ICM. He describes how the ICM can be expanded into an Inverted Classroom Mastery Model (ICMM) including assessment structures and how this can evolve into a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). ICM implementation is also a chance to activate students in a university setting and to motivate them to take responsibility for their learning. Feedback structures, engaging methods such as Peer Instruction and group work play an important role in achieving this goal, as discussed by Clemens Möller in his article on the concrete application of classroom activities in his ICM-based classes. Developing key competences is a major goal of Anasthasios Vassiliou’s classes. They were formerly taught using a blended learning approach and have recently been inverted using screencasts and print materials made available via Moodle. In his article, he discusses the advantages of the ICM in comparison to the blended learning concept and includes the results of a student survey.

1

The Inverted Classroom: Where to Go from Here Jörn Loviscach

The freedom gained by switching to the Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) needs to be used wisely. This chapter looks at how to improve the basic implementation of the ICM as online lecture recordings combined with face-to-face discussions. This chapter focuses on applications in post-secondary STEM 1 education. It describes approaches found in practice (including the author’s classes), reviews the applicable scientific literature, and points out questions to be addressed by future research.

1.1

Introduction

Detailed surveys conducted both in the U.S. (Babcock/Marks, 2011) and Germany [INT10] show that students at colleges and universities devote much less time to studying than they are officially expected to. Correspondingly, the cognitive gains often turn out to be meagre. (Pascarella/Terenzini, 2005: 205). Given this situation, lecturing to passive students who are distracted by Facebook (cf. Junco, 2012) and WhatsApp or whatever is popular at the moment appears to be an absurdity. However, the idea of the lecture is deeply ingrained in both the students’ and the teachers’ minds (cf. [INT12]). In addition, a huge amount of expository teaching seems to be unavoidable, for instance to introduce students to mathematical formalisms. This way, one can grasp the equations behind digital filters or the theory of relativity in a matter of hours rather than developing them on one’s own over the course of months, possibly still missing vital tricks or caveats. Thus, putting lecture videos online and consequently relieving lectures from restrictions concerning time and place is an obvious way to go. Web-based lectures improve access for part-time students and enable slow learners to work at their own pace. In terms of learning, however, web-based lectures do not lead to a fundamental difference. _________________ 1

STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

4

1 The Inverted Classroom: Where to Go from Here

This is where the Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) plays a significant role: Students can peruse lecture videos on their own – thus making better use of their out-of-class time than before. And with a time slot in the class schedule still being assigned to the (now superfluous) lecture, there is time to spend on solving more complex problems and on discussions, all guided by the teacher. Where homework in math and physics in particular tends to be demotivatingly difficult for many students, the online component of the class can focus on exposition and on the development of skills. The face-to-face time of the class, however, is available for openended discussions, discovery learning, and other constructivist methods that require proficient, swift and highly personalized scaffolding from a teacher, which is something that is far beyond the capability of currently available software. Hence, the idea is to make the most of the resources, in particular the students’ time, the teacher’s time and expertise, and computer support. The ICM can be applied in a vast array of subjects, comprising, for instance, biochemistry for medicine (Prober/Heath, 2012) as well as audio technology (Keyes, 2013).

1.2

The ICM and educational research

Currently, research papers on the ICM focus largely on anecdotal reports on teaching experiments accompanied by survey results and data on class grade distributions (cf. Gehringer/Peddycord, 2013 and Lockwood/Esselstein, 2013). However, many aspects of the ICM such as educational videos and active learning have been covered extensively by general research into education. Education proves to be a highly complex field of research. Measuring input and outcomes is not only difficult, but riddled by questions of political intent. For instance: Do we aim at a short-term recall of facts or at a long-term ability to think critically – or both or even more? Thus, the numbers gained from experiments require detailed interpretation. The settings in which the experiments take place are not easy to control and subject to extreme variability: Does a specific teacher have a certain quality or quirk that heavily influences the results? Can results from different cohorts of students be compared? Can results from different subjects be compared? There are ingenious ways to cope with these issues (Hubbard, 2010). Matters are more complex, however, if the results are not merely of scientific interest but are used to decide about incentives such as providing extra funding for a department. This may result in gross distortions. For instance, if there is a reward for high retention rates but none for the academic excellence of the graduates, the latter may suffer. Psychologists have long been aware that simply the act of observing people leads to improvement, the so-called Hawthorne effect (cf. McCarney et al., 2007). This may be a reason for almost any reported intervention in education being successful. 2 A second phenomenon that may contribute here may be publication bias (Rothstein et al., 2005), as negative results tend to not be published. _________________ 2

Compare the overwhelming number of interventions rated positive in Hattie, 2008.

1.3 Video types and video content

5

A psychological effect to which educational researchers have to pay special attention is the metacognitive issue of learners overestimating their abilities. Less competence goes hand in hand with being too confident about one’s supposed competence – the Dunning-Kruger effect (Ehrlinger et al., 2008). Hence, self-reports of understanding are to be treated with great caution. In particular, if the audience welcomes a specific educational intervention, this does not mean that this intervention was effective in terms of learning. It is even conceivable that an effective educational intervention may be one that leads to confusion as it destructs an ill-founded confidence and consequently, may be disliked by many. Given this plethora of issues, it is hardly surprising that the overall state of research tends to be inconclusive. For instance, a 2010 meta-analysis by the U.S. Department of Education states that “[t]he effectiveness of online learning approaches appears quite broad across different content and learner types.” (Means et al., 2010: xv) According to this metaanalysis, blended learning, collaborative instruction, instructor-directed instruction, features that prompt self-explanations, and synchronous communication with the instructor have all proven to be beneficial. This meta-analysis does not find significant effects for online videos; quizzes; synchronous as well as asynchronous communication with peers; and independent online learning. This sounds counterintuitive given the current flurry concerning such features, but may, for instance, be explained by a change in media usage over time, as the studies contained in the meta-analysis stem from the years 1997 to 2008. Whereas the aforementioned 2010 meta-analysis of the U.S. Department of Education reaches a positive verdict on the use of online learning, a 2013 study involving over 40,000 community and technical college students concludes: Overall, the online format had a significantly negative relationship with both course persistence and course grade, indicating that the typical student had difficulty adapting to online courses. […] Specifically, we found that males, Black students, and students with lower levels of academic preparation experienced significantly stronger negative coefficients for online learning […]. (Xu/Jaggars, 2013: 23) These research outcomes demonstrate that much caution needs to be taken when conducting and analyzing studies on education and when trying to put their results into practice. The discussions to follow in this chapter should be taken with a grain of salt.

1.3

Video types and video content

‘Recorded lectures’ is too narrow a term to describe online video used in the ICM. A huge range of types of videos can be employed, especially thanks to open content from third parties. Some of these types of videos are detailed in the following.

1.3.1

Expository lectures

Today, these are the staple of web-based learning. A lecturer explains a theory, a method, or a similar item. From experiments done on regular lectures, note-taking is known to enhance learning; this can even be improved by providing a printable scaffold for taking notes (DeZure et al., 2001). The author asks his students to fill in the blanks left for all

6

1 The Inverted Classroom: Where to Go from Here

diagrams and all important equations and derivations in his otherwise complete lecture notes while they watch the videos. This is not only intended to function as a mnemonic aid but also as a countermeasure against the distraction caused by Facebook and other social network sites or games which are looming in an adjacent browser tab. In addition, the lecture notes may be valued higher due to the individual work added, an “IKEA effect” (Norton et al., 2012).

1.3.2

Worked examples

As students may be overwhelmed with the number of steps required to solve a given problem, worked examples may lower the cognitive load. After one or several complete examples, sub-steps may be left out (‘faded’) to be supplied by the student (Renkl/Atkinson, 2003). Worked examples can be grouped to mirror an expert’s schema of thinking about the ideal way of reaching the solution (Lewis, 2005). In addition, they enable the instructor to speak about the rationale behind each step he or she takes. The author employs this approach, often turning problems from old exams into worked examples.

1.3.3

Deconstruction of misconceptions

Misconceptions have been researched into in particular by the physics education community, trying to improve the poor performance of students when applying basic concepts to simple problems (Hestenes, 2006: 16). This poor performance highlights the limits of lecturing – be it face-to-face or online. Even worse, factually correct and seemingly well-designed, well-produced videos can reinforce misconceptions. It is beneficial to invest the time to explicitly address misconceptions, and hence to increase rather than lower the cognitive load (Muller, 2008).

1.3.4

Recordings of tutoring

Discussions of misconceptions and other tutoring sessions can be filmed and used for ‘vicarious learning’, that is, learning by watching others. This may even be combined with having students watch such tutoring in pairs and discuss what they see (Craig et al., 2009).

1.3.5

Video documentations, historical recordings, movie-like scenes, and interviews of experts or practitioners

A video resembling a standard TV broadcast can be used as an anchor to introduce a topic, to start in-depth discussions (cf. Witteveen/Lie, 2012) or to present an outlook on advanced topics.

1.4 Video style

1.4

7

Video style

Existing research (Mayer, 2009) offers a set of guidelines for multimedia design. In particular, words should mostly be presented as narration, not as on-screen text – in contrast to what one sees in many existing filmed PowerPoint presentations; words explaining parts of diagrams should appear within the diagrams, not in a separate legend; extraneous material is to be avoided. Many such guidelines are obvious from cognitive load theory and dual coding theory. Diagrams, even though they take more time to develop, tend to be superior to text. These classic guidelines are in line with the success of ‘Khan-style’ videos on YouTube, which solely consist of writing and drawing accompanied by narration. Obviously, however, there is more to these videos than has been researched into as of yet. As Khan explains, his videos are “conversational” [INT4]. He talks “to another human being” while thinking, drawing, and writing – all of that improvised. There is no trained speaker performing a polished script over slides with fancy graphics. Hand-drawn diagrams seem to be easier to comprehend – and are far quicker and cheaper to produce than elaborate computer drawings. As the author has learned from his own ‘Khan-style’ videos, even poorly legible handwriting seems to be acceptable; some research actually suggests that reduced legibility enhances recall (Diemand-Yauman, 2011). The author also tries to apply elements of the visual language of comics (McCloud, 1993) and structured approaches to informal visualization (Roam, 2008), for instance, to highlight relations and processes. In contrast to most lecture recordings created at universities, ‘Khan-style’ videos do not feature a talking head. This simplifies the production but also removes a potentially distracting element. Rather than showing the lecturer’s head, the videos produced by Udacity – one of the leading providers of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) 3 – add personality by a different graphical element: The lecturer’s hand is visible. This may also point toward gestures being an important part of explanations (Wagner Cook et al., in press). Whereas Khan’s videos are not subjected to editing, the author removes silence, noise, and bloopers in his videos. At Udacity, videos are even edited for maximum density of the material: Lines of written text and complete hand drawings pop up; there are no pauses in the narration. The verdict is still out on which of these approaches is the most effective. Khan [INT4] recommends breaking the content into self-contained chunks of at most ten minutes. These are easier to produce and to navigate. In addition, the learner feels an accomplishment earlier than after a 60-minute lecture and hence is motivated to continue. Typically, ‘Khan-style’ videos are produced in a regular office or even in the instructor’s living room. A substantial part of MOOC videos are recorded in simple studios. In both cases, there is no live audience, which makes it hard for the instructor (as the author can _________________ 3

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a recent development in distance education. They are often video-supported, offer opportunities for collaboration and are made available on the web for large audiences.

8

1 The Inverted Classroom: Where to Go from Here

attest to) to remain mentally focused and to speak loudly, clearly, and with enthusiasm, or to possibly even add a joke or two. This is easier to achieve in videos that are recordings of face-to-face classes. The author records his live lectures interspersed with questions to and from the audience as well as video snapshots from the problem-solving process in the face-to-face phase of the ICM. This enables highly scaffolded discovery learning – without a huge degree of support, users of the videos may go astray – and allows adjusting the pace and giving appropriate guidance in real time rather than in hindsight. The author hopes that online learners pause the video after every question and think for themselves. However, according to anecdotal evidence, only a negligible percentage of users do so.

1.5

Additional online elements

As featured by almost all currently popular MOOCs, two online elements can accompany lecture videos: web-based communication (typically implemented through an asynchronous forum, rather than through real-time text or even audio or video chat) and computer-graded quizzes. Students state the need for online communication: “Amongst the students interviewed there was a high expectation of almost instant tutor feedback, and frustration when this was not received.” (Deepwell/Malik, 2008: 11) This need seems to be contradicted by the low rate of active use of the forums in MOOCs. For instance, whereas approximately 8000 participants started Duke University’s MOOC on bioelectricity and approximately 4000 watched the video review of the first week, only 800 participants posted on the forum (Belanger/Thornton, 2013: 8). In the German MOOC “Internetworking”, 2043 users of the forum did not post anything, 220 users posted a single message, and 368 users posted more than a single message [INT8]. This discrepancy between self-reported need and limited actual need may indicate that the students’ self-assessment is distorted. This discrepancy may, however, also suggest issues with the implementation: Of what importance is the time delay between the question and the answer? Of what importance are privacy and anonymity as opposed to posting personally identifiable comments or questions on a forum (Miyazoe/Anderson, 2011)? Can giving feedback be delegated to the fellow students (An et al., 2009)? As students who struggle with a course seem to be ones who should be asking questions, but do not (Davies/Graff, 2005), a better approach may be to only use online material with the ICM that is highly self-explanatory. The second element popularized by MOOCs are computer-graded quizzes inserted inbetween the lectures. In addition to the obvious benefits of active exercising and instant formative evaluation, quizzes also help keep one’s mind focused on learning (Szpunar et al., 2013). Staying focused is of particular importance due to the temptation to indulge in multitasking, which is detrimental to academic performance (Junco, 2012). A third additional element found in some MOOCs are online simulations. These may be programs written by the students themselves, an approach that is used in a course developed by the author [INT6]. Regularly, however, these are pre-built, web-based software

1.6 Activities in the classroom

9

applications that often offer limited control through text or mouse input but may also support complex designs like the ‘Circuit Sandbox’ in MIT’s ‘Circuits and Electronics’ [INT7].

1.6

Activities in the classroom

Whereas the online phase of the ICM can aim at providing lectures and possibly also quizzes that require little support, the face-to-face phase can make bolder strides to make full use of the classmates and the teacher being available in person. A method that is particularly effective but also simple to implement has already been widely researched into as an enrichment of standard lectures: Peer Instruction (Porter et al., 2013). Here, challenging questions are posed to the students. Initially, every student has to answer on his or her own. After small-group discussions, students are asked again. One may conclude each question with a whole-class discussion. Rather than only asking the students to answer multiple-choice quizzes, one can use the face-to-face phase to accomplish ‘discovery learning’. As a step toward implementing this, the author tries to let students discover how to handle exceptional cases that they have not seen before. In the spirit of the guideline to “play out of town” (Perkins, 2009) the author also tries to induce a ‘far transfer’ of learning by assigning a given seemingly unrelated problem and asking the students to solve it with ideas similar to the ones covered before. (An example would be to find a vector in four-dimensional space that is perpendicular to three given vectors, after learning about the cross product in three dimensions.) Another method known from not-so-standard lectures is just-in-time teaching (Simkins/Maier, 2010). Here, students are asked to complete some online activity before class. Depending on the results that are submitted, the content of the face-to-face lecture can be adapted, in particular to address misunderstandings. A third avenue is to fully embrace the asynchrony offered by online videos and potentially also online quizzes: Every student can work at his or her own pace throughout the semester. In this situation, whole-class activities in the face-to-face phase of the ICM make little sense, as some students may work on unit 5 whereas others are trying to cope with unit 3. Rather, the teacher can work with students individually or having the students form groups or assign them to groups. It may make sense to not group students by their current abilities but rather try to form highly heterogeneous groups (Slavin, 2010). The ultimate goal of such an asynchronous process can be to have every student master any unit he or she covers and not to give passing grades for shallow ‘good enough’ knowledge and skills. This idea of mastery learning has been revitalized by the school experiments of Salman Khan (2012) and has been taken up by other promoters of the ICM, for instance under the name Flipped-Mastery Classroom (Bergmann/Sams, 2012). Asynchrony in the face-to-face phase of the ICM does, however, raise some issues: First, it may be inefficient for the teacher to give the same assignments and advice to several students independently. Some interventions can be shared by the whole class. Second, as a standard class will be concluded by an exam at least at the end of the semester, all students need to finish the material by that point in time. This requires remedial instruction for all

10

1 The Inverted Classroom: Where to Go from Here

who lag behind. (Normally, it becomes clear early who lags behind and by how much.) In mastery learning – as in many other approaches – the required final exam counteracts the educator’s good intentions (cf. Francis, 2009).

1.7

MOOC-wrapping

As major U.S.-based MOOC providers such as Coursera, edX, Udacity, and Academic Partnerships aim to cooperate with community colleges and/or non-ivy-league universities for distributing their courses, the idea of ‘wrapping’ a face-to-face class around an existing MOOC is not far-fetched. (Another term suggested for this approach is the ‘distributed flip’ [INT1].) Watching the videos and solving the quizzes of the MOOC can easily become the online phase of the ICM, as suggested by Daphne Koller, co-founder of Coursera [INT5]. The efficacy of such an approach is suggested for instance by anecdotal evidence from MOOC wrapping [INT9] and by large-scale trials in blended learning based on online courses from Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI) that mostly comprise text and comparatively elaborate quizzes (Bowen et al., 2012). The latter study did not find any difference between face-to-face and blended formats in terms of final grades, pass rate, and the results on a standardized test that focuses on literacy and understanding. The blended format included only very little face-to-face time: one hour per week as opposed to a regular class time of three hours per week, in an attempt to save cost. It is conceivable that using all of the regular class time for the blended format would lead to improved results. Currently, however, such an approach faces several difficulties: First, MOOCs tend to be run on a rigid schedule (with Udacity being a prominent exception) which may only by luck fit to the class schedule of a university. Second, providers may see MOOC wrapping as a potential source of revenue and hence forbid the unlicensed use by universities: You may not take any Online Course offered by Coursera or use any Statement of Accomplishment as part of any tuition-based or for-credit certification or program for any college, university, or other academic institution without the express written permission from Coursera. [INT3]

1.8

Conclusion

The ICM aims at uniting the benefits of face-to-face and online education. Conceivably, one can continue on this avenue toward an eclectic mix of methods that ranges from direct instruction to constructivist and possibly even connectivist approaches. In the grand scheme of things, however, many implications have to be considered. First, the class in which the ICM is being applied is not the sole class a student is taking. Traditional classes and those classes following the ICM tend to mutually impact each other. For instance, the author observes that some of his students tend to focus on other classes during the lecture period, hoping to catch up with the help of the online material during the semester break. Hence they forgo many benefits of the face-to-face phase. One option to

1.9 References

11

prevent this – and to profit from other positive effects – would be to switch to a schedule in which several weeks are devoted to each subject in exclusivity, with no other subject being taught in parallel. At Cornell College, for instance, such a schedule called ‘One Course at a Time’ has been in place since 1978 [INT2]. Second, one may argue that educational videos lead to a shallow presentation of content. Footnotes and complex reasoning are dropped. Which effects does this have? Does the face-to-face class make up for that? Would the students not have grasped such deep aspects from a regular lecture anyway? Do (some) students unlearn or never learn advanced reading, even more so critical reading? Are (some) students under-challenged? Does the close scaffolding train them to be dependent on guidance or does a mastery-learning approach train them to become independent learners? Third and finally, the in-depth discussion of educational methods tends to obstruct one’s view of education as a whole: Does it make sense to teach separate subjects – or should the curriculum mostly consist of projects, such as the ‘One Course at a Time’ course scheme (Schank, 2007)? What is important to learn in the age of Google, Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha? How can education prepare students for a job that has not been invented yet? And is most ‘formal learning’ an illusion anyway [INT11]?

1.9

References

An, Heejung/Shin, Sunghee/Lim, Keol. 2009. The effects of different instructor facilitation approaches on students’ interactions during asynchronous online discussions. In: Computers & Education 53, 749–746. Babcock, Philip/Marks, Mindy. 2011. The falling time cost of college: evidence from half a century of time use data. In: The Review of Economics and Statistics 93 (2), 468–478. Belanger, Yvonne/Thornton, Jessica. 2013. Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach. Duke University’s First MOOC. Durham, NC: Center for Instructional Technology, Duke University. Bergmann, Jonathan/Sams, Aaron. 2012. Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Washington, DC: ISTE. Bowen, William G./Chingos, Matthew M./Lack, Kelly A./Nygren, Thomas I. 2012. Interactive Learning Online at Public Universities: Evidence from Randomized Trials. New York: Ithaka S+R. Craig, Scotty D./Chi, Michelene T. H./VanLehn, Kurt. 2009. Improving classroom learning by collaboratively observing human tutoring videos while problem solving. In: Journal of Educational Psychology 101 (4), 779–789. Davies, Jo/Graff, Martin. 2005. Performance in e-learning: online participation and student grades. In: British Journal of Educational Technology 36 (4), 657–663. Deepwell, Frances/Malik, Samina. 2008. On campus, but out of class: an investigation into students’ experiences of learning technologies in their self-directed study. In: Research in Learning Technology 16 (1), 5–14.

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DeZure, Deborah/Kaplan, Matthew/Deerman, Martha A. 2001. Research on student notetaking: implications for faculty and graduate student instructors. In: CRLT Occasional Papers No. 16. Ann Arbour, MI: Center of Research on Learning and Teaching, University of Michigan. Diemand-Yauman, Connor/Oppenheimer, Daniel M./Vaughan Erikka B. 2011. Fortune favors the bold (and the italicized): effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. In: Cognition 118 (1), 111–115. Ehrlinger, Joyce/Johnson, Kerri/Banner, Matthew/Dunning, David/Kruger, Justin. 2008. Why the unskilled are unaware: further explorations of (absent) self-insight among the incompetent. In: Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 105 (1), 98–121. Francis, Paul/Figl, Cristina/Savage, Craig. 2009. Mastery learning in a large first year physics class. In: Proceedings of UniServe Science 2009, 152–159. Gehringer, Edward F./Peddycord III, Barry W. 2013. The inverted-lecture model: a case study in computer architecture. In: Proceedings of the 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education SIGCSE 2013, 489–494. Hattie, John. 2008. Visible Learning: A Synthesis of over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. New York: Taylor & Francis. Hestenes, David. 2006. Notes for a modeling theory of science, cognition and instruction. In: Proceedings of the 2006 GIREP Conference on Modelling in Physics and Physics Education, 34–65. Hubbard. Douglas W. 2010. How to Measure Everything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business. Hoboken: Wiley. Junco, Reynol. 2012. In-class multitasking and academic performance. In: Computer in Human Behavior 28 (6), 2236–2243. Keyes, Christopher J. 2013. Alternate software and pedagogical strategies for teaching audio technology to classically trained music students. In: Proceedings of the 134th Convention of the Audio Engineering Society, Paper 8809. Khan, Salman. 2012. The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Lewis, R. David. 2005. Demobank: a method of presenting just-in-time online learning. In: Proceedings of the Annual International Convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), Vol. 2, 371–375. Lockwood, Kate/Esselstein, Rachel. 2013. The inverted classroom and the CS curriculum. In: Proceedings of the 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education SIGCSE 2013, 113–118. Mayer, Richard E. 2009. Multimedia Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCarney, Rob/Warner, James/Iliffe, Steve/van Haselen, Robbert/Griffin, Mark/Fisher, Peter. 2007. The Hawthorne effect: a randomised, controlled trial. In: BMC Medical Research Methodology 7:30. McCloud, Scott. 1993. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Northampton: Tundra.

1.9 References

13

Means, Barbara/Toyama, Yukie/Murphy, Robert/Bakia, Marianne/Jones, Karla. 2010. Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies. Report from the Center for Technology in Learning under contract to the U.S. Department of Education. Revised September 2010. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Miyazoe, Terumi/Anderson, Terry. 20122. Anonymity in blended learning: who would you like to be? In: Educational Technology & Society 14 (2), 175–187. Muller, Derek A. 2008. Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education. PhD Thesis. Sydney: School of Physics, University of Sydney. Norton, Michael I./Mochonb, Daniel/Ariely, Dan. 2012. The IKEA effect: when labor leads to love. In: Journal of Consumer Psychology 22 (3), 453–460. Pascarella, Ernest T./Terenzini Patrick T. 2005. How College Affects Students: A Third Decade of Research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Perkins, David N. 2009. Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching can Transform Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Porter, Leo/Bailey Lee, Cynthia/Simon, Beth. 2013. Halving fail rates using peer instruction: a study of four computer science courses. In: Proceedings of the 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education SIGCSE 2013, 177–182. Prober, Charles G./Heath, Chip. 2012. Lecture halls without lectures – a proposal for medical education. In: The New England Journal of Medicine 366 (18), 1657–1659. Roam, Dan. 2008. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. New York: Portfolio, New York. Renkl, Alexander/Atkinson, Robert K. 2003. Structuring the transition from example study to problem solving in cognitive skill acquisition: a cognitive load perspective. In: Educational Psychologist 38 (1), 15–22. Rothstein, Hannah R./Sutton, Alexander J./Borenstein, Michael (Eds.). 2005. Publication Bias in Meta-Analysis: Prevention, Assessment and Adjustments. Chichester: Wiley. Schank, Roger. 2007. The story-centered curriculum. In: eLearn Magazine Issue 4/2007, 1. Simkins, Scott P./Maier, Mark H. 2010. Just-in-time Teaching: Across the Disciplines, and Across the Academy. Sterling: Stylus. Slavin, Robert. E. 2010. Co-operative learning: what makes groupwork work? In: Dumont, Hanna/Istance, David/Benavides, Francisco (eds.). The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice. Paris: OECD. 161–178. Szpunar, K.K./Khan, N.Y./Schacter, D.L. 2013. Interpolated memory tests reduce mind wandering and improve learning of online lectures. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States 110 (16), 6313–6317. Wagner Cook, Susan/Duffy, Ryan G./Fenn, Kimberly M. In press. Consolidation and transfer of learning after observing hand gesture. In: Child Development. Witteveen. Loes/Lie, Rico. 2012. Learning about “wicked” problems in the Global South. Creating a film-based learning environment with “Visual Problem Appraisal”. In: MedieKultur 52, 81–99. Xu, Di/Jaggars, Shanna S. 2013. Adaptability to Online Learning: Differences across Types of Students and Academic Subject Areas. CCRC Working Paper No. 54, New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

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[INT1] Collier, Amy. Distributed flip. http://hapgood.us/2013/04/11/introducing-the-distributed-flip/; last accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT2] Cornell College. One course at a time. http://www.cornellcollege.edu/academics/ocaat/; last accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT3] Coursera, Inc. Terms of Use. https://www.coursera.org/about/terms; last accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT4] Khan, Salman. Making a KSV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohu-5sVux28; last accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT5] Koller, Daphne. How online courses can form a basis for on-campus teaching. http://www.forbes.com/sites/coursera/2012/11/07/how-online-courses-can-forma-basis-for-on-campus-teaching/; last accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT6] Loviscach, Jörn: Differential equations in action. https://www.udacity.com/course/cs222; last accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT7] MITx. 2012. Circuit sandbox. https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu/courseware/6.002_Spring_2012/ Overview/Circuit_Sandbox/; accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT8] Open HPI. 2013. Statistics on the course “Internetworking”. https://blog.openhpi.de/2013/01/ einige-statistische-auswertungen-zum-internetworking-kurs/; last accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT9] San Jose State University. 2013. SJSU/EdX adds more campuses, courses. http://blogs.sjsu.edu/today/2013/sjsuedx-expansion/; last accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT10] Schulmeister, Rolf/Metzger, Christiane. Projekt ZEITLast. http://www.zhw.uni-hamburg. de/zhw/?page_id=419; last accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT11] Shackelton-Jones, Nick. 2013. There’s no such thing as “formal learning”. http://www.aconventional.com/2013/03/there-no-such-thing-as-learning.html; last accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT12] Talbert, Robert. 2012. Resistance to the inverted classroom can show up everywhere. http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2012/02/06/resistance-to-theinverted-classroom-can-show-up-anywhere/; last accessed on 16/05/2013

2

Beyond a Simple ICM Jürgen Handke

The central principle of the Inverted Classroom Model is to swap the two central activities of teaching and learning. That this mere ‘classroom flip’ is by no means sufficient to guarantee any visible learning effects is well known. In this contribution to the conference volume, Handke takes up some of his proposals of the 2012 conference and discusses how a simple ICM can first be expanded into an Inverted Classroom Mastery Model (ICMM) and how simple it is to convert such a model to a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).

2.1

ICM-based teaching and learning

The central ideas underlying the Inverted Classroom Model were outlined by Schäfer (2012: 4). The two central activities, content acquisition and content delivery in-class, on the one hand, and practicing and deepening at home, on the other, are swapped so that the initial phase I becomes a self-guided online phase of content delivery and the subsequent phase II becomes the in-class phase where the deepening of the content constitutes the focus. Figure 2.1 illustrates this fundamental idea of the ICM.

Figure 2.1: A simple ICM scenario.

This simple model evokes a central question: How can we guarantee that the content that is made available for self-guided studies in phase I is mastered? The simple answer is: We cannot! Just like in a traditional teaching and learning scenario, we will always have students who ignore even the most carefully designed content and will constitute a group that will remain almost unaffected by all our efforts of content delivery. But for all the

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2 Beyond a Simple ICM

others we can introduce principles enabling them to continuously evaluate themselves, practice, and receive permanent feedback. These principles, in particular, formative evaluation and feedback, constitute considerable ‘visible learning effects’ in John Hattie’s meta-study (2009) and rank highly on the scale of the 138 effects: feedback is at rank 10, formative evaluation is at rank 3. So in order to promote a simple ICM to a teaching and learning model that not only guarantees successful content delivery in phase I but also incorporates the option of demonstrating mastery and exhibits visible learning effects, we have to add an additional component to a simple ICM. This component is an elaborate e-assessment system that serves as a mediator between phase I and phase II.

2.2

Towards mastery learning

The addition of formative assessment to the ICM is simple: Each self-guided online phase is linked to an electronic test where the students can demonstrate mastery. Figure 2.2 exhibits this expanded Inverted Classroom Model.

Figure 2.2: The Inverted Classroom Model – expanded.

But what happens if students fail the test and cannot demonstrate mastery? In such a case, they are given two options: Either they can repeat the test and try again or they simply give up and attend the in-class meeting without having shown mastery. In Figure 2.3,  and  exhibit the first option: the simple repetition of the test () or the repetition of the test after reconsulting phase I (). Option  shows the path students would take if they cannot demonstrate mastery, or they are reluctant to do so.

2.2 Towards mastery learning

17

Figure 2.3: The Inverted Classroom Mastery Model (ICMM).

There will always be students who lack motivation and desire to master the content (option  in Figure 2.3). They attend the in-class meeting either without trying to pass the test, or – in the extreme case – they do not even look at the content that is at their disposal in phase I. To implement such an Inverted Classroom Mastery Model, two requirements have to be met: 1.

The scenario has to incorporate an elaborate system of formative testing.

2.

The class instructor must have permanent access to the test results.

2.2.1

The VLC principles of formative testing

On the VLC, a principle of ‘iterative’ testing where each test can be repeated infinitely has been used for several years. Furthermore, we do not demonize failure: If students do not pass a test no one will notice, i.e. no entry in the database will be made. 1 However, if the score reaches or surpasses the 60 % level, it will be stored and previous scores will be overwritten. This means that students can even change their score once they have passed a test, that is, they can raise or lower the score but they will not fall below the 60 % level again. In other words, 60 % or higher is the ‘mastery level’. In a standard VLC-class, all electronic tests are connected to the e-learning units in it, one test per unit. Students have permanent access to their test scores via a special URL on their personalized class start site. Table 2.1 exhibits a snapshot of a student’s test results after two units of the class ‘Phonetics, Phonology and Transcription’ on the VLC.

_________________ 1

Since each test involves at least fifteen questions randomly drawn from a database that contains a multiple of fifteen questions, it is unlikely that students will be given the same set of questions when they repeat a test.

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2 Beyond a Simple ICM

Table 2.1: The VLC display option for electronic tests. No.

Unit Title

Test Name

1

Phonetics – An Overview Consonants

2

How many items ...?

Your Score 60 %

High score 100 %

Place of Articulation

70 %

95 %

Submission Date 2013-03-26 13:40:54 2013-03-26 17:08:31

In addition to their own score, students can also see the current high score for each test of their class. This serves as additional motivation to repeat a test until an acceptable score is reached (Table 2.1, column 5). On the Virtual Linguistics Campus (VLC), the e-education platform of the conference organizers, the following electronic tests are offered (see Handke/Schäfer, 2012: 185): • Multiple-choice • Drag and Drop tasks • Listening tasks • Analysis Tasks • Segmentation tasks • Input tasks • Transcription tasks

2.2.2

The consequences of formative testing

The central idea of formative testing is that teachers can modify subsequent learning activities depending on the outcome of a test [INT1]. This necessitates that they have permanent access to the scores of all class participants, an option that is an integral of the class instructor’s view on the personal class start site on the VLC. Table 2.2 displays a snapshot of the results of four class participants after two e-learning units of a class taught during the 2013 summer term. Table 2.2: E-assessment: the class instructor view (after two units); all names have been anonymized. No.

Last Name

First Name

No. of Tests (Maximum)

Class Average (%)

1

Beyer

Maria

1,2 (14 %)

12 %

2

Clarin

Hannes

1,2 (14 %)

11 %

3 …

Diethelm …

Doro …

1,2 (14 %) …

14 % …

26

Unger

Rolf

1 (7 %)

7%

2.3 MOOCs

19

After two tests, the maximum score is 14 % (Table 2.2, column 4), a score which was only reached by the third student, Doro Diethelm. In other words, she is the only student who could demonstrate full mastery. But what do we do with the other students? In the case of those students who have passed the first two tests and have reached 8 % or more we can assume at least partial mastery; In the case of student no. 26, Rolf Unger, however, we have to assume non-mastery. It is important to note, however, that there can be several reasons for non-mastery. For example, students may not have understood the content, the test may have been too difficult, students may have simply ignored the test for whatever reasons, and so on. In a traditional teaching scenario, it would be extremely difficult to take care of Rolf Unger’s problem. In an ICM scenario, however, we have the time to first of all find out about the reasons for non-mastery. If the reasons somehow have to do with the content, we have several options in the ICMM for remedial action. For example, a typical in-class scenario using such an extended version of the ICM with formative assessment in the middle is to split up the whole group into several parts and give them different tasks depending on their degree of mastery. The class instructor, who has to invest less time in content presentation, can now give special attention to each of these groups separately, i.e. help non-mastery students to catch up and support mastery students in solving even more advanced tasks. In such an Inverted Classroom Mastery Model, formative tests truly have the desired effect. Their results influence the organization of the in-class phase.

2.3

MOOCs

Since 2012, “Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have certainly got higher education folks talking” [INT2], they have created an enormous interest, if not hype: large-scale courses, with open access, with all materials available at anytime from anywhere. For those who have never used their materials in an Inverted Classroom scenario, MOOCs are indeed something fascinating and exciting. But if we look at the central ingredients of a MOOC, we immediately see that there is actually nothing spectacular about them: • They use video as the primary means for content delivery. • They add electronic tests, by and large multiple choice tasks. • They use a forum or message-board for the participants to exchange their ideas. All these components have been standard in normal online-courses. In fact, “many MOOCs are pretty disappointing. Information is delivered in traditional ways – a 50 minute video of a lecture is still a 50 minute lecture.” [INT2] So there is nothing mysterious or innovative about MOOCs, they are online-classes without an instructor and are video-based. Since all classes on the VLC are based on the ICMM, they can easily be converted into MOOCs. Currently the VLC hosts approximately 500 different linguistics classes. All we have to do is abandon the in-class phase and replace it by additional material for self-guided practicals and add a forum for users to discuss their

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problems without an in-class instructor around. Figure 2.4 displays this VLC-model of a MOOC which is essentially an ICMM stripped of the in-class meeting phase.

Figure 2.4: An ICMM without in-class teaching – an online model.

Note that the formative assessment of the ICMM has now become summative, since no formative effects can be applied to subsequent teaching methods. In an advanced model, we could potentially supply the students with different practical material depending on their test results by analogy with the classical ICMM and its formative effects on in-class teaching. As a side effect, the reduced ICMM-MOOC model which still measures mastery for each unit can now result in a promising business model. All those participants who reach or surpass the 60 % class average will optionally be offered a special statement of accomplishment for a small fee. And since there are many tests that have to be done, one per unit, the possibility of cheating can be dramatically reduced: Who wants to perform ten or more tests for another person who eventually receives the class certificate? In summary, an extended model of the ICM where formative assessment constitutes the basis for demonstrating mastery and shapes our in-class behaviour may not just be used for on-campus classes but may also easily be converted into a MOOC. That such ICMM-based MOOCs are just right for our community is reflected in the comments that were part of the evaluation of the VLC-MOOC ‘Phonetics, Phonology and Transcription’ that was active between April 15th and May 31st 2013: (1) Thank you for a wonderful opportunity to self-check and improve the knowledge of phonetics/phonology/transcription. The course was really user-friendly. I loved the worksheets :). (2) It's truly a great gift to the education for the entire world. Everything was just perfect, the personification of the education as such. Box 2.1: Comments from the evaluation of the VLC-MOOC ‘Phonetics, Phonology and Transcription’.

2.4 References

2.4

21

References

Handke, Jürgen. 2012. Voraussetzungen für das ICM. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICMKonferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 39–52. Handke, Jürgen/Schäfer, Anna Maria. 2012. E-Learning, E-Teaching und E-Assessment in der Hochschullehre. Eine Anleitung. München: Oldenbourg. Hattie, John. 2009. Visible Learning. A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. New York: Routledge. Schäfer, Anna Maria. 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Modell. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 3–12. [INT1] Wikipedia.org. Formative Assessment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formative_assessment; last accessed on 15/07/2013. [INT2] Oliver, Beverly. 2013. Proving knowledge by degrees: MOOCs and the challenge of assessment. http://theconversation.com/proving-knowledge-by-degrees-moocsand-the-challenge-of-assessment-10858; last accessed on 15/07/2013.

3

Activating Students by Inverting and Shuffling the Classroom – Experiences from Employing ICM and I²CM Clemens Möller 1

In a university setting, the lecturer may be confronted with different challenges. These include dealing with very heterogenous learning groups, dealing with very large learning groups, and activating students from a passive, receptive studying attitude towards an active studying behaviour and making the students assume responsibility for one's own studying success. In this article experiences from applying the Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) are reported and discussed. The ICM provides an effective tool for addressing the challenges noted above. An overview of how the ICM might be applied in different study settings to activate and engage students is given, and a method of further inverting the classroom to create the ‘shuffled’ classroom for more advanced students is proposed. The ICM should not be understood as a successful method per se. Rather, the ICM and the concrete application of the classroom method combined with ICM needs to suit the lecturer as well as the students. Feedback is a fundamental tool to achieve this. _________________ 1

The author would like to thank his colleagues for discussions and valuable input, especially Profs Colleen Dockery, Christian Gerhards, Tobias Häberlein, Andreas Schmid and Alfred Sesterhenn, and the IT department of Albstadt-Sigmaringen University for technical support. He would like to thank his students for their patience, for allowing him to try out different ideas in teaching and for giving valuable feedback on what helped them, what worked for them, and what did not. The views expressed in this article, however, represent the opinion of the author and should not be construed as expressing the views of anyone else. Also, the views expressed in this manuscript do not necessarily represent the views of Albstadt-Sigmaringen University. This work was in part supported by the Innovations- and Qualitätsfonds (IQF) of the Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst Baden Württemberg (Project ‘Aktivierung in der Studieneingangsphase‘, Program ‘Willkommen in der Wissenschaft‘).

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3.1

3 Activating Students by Inverting and Shuffling the Classroom

Introduction

Albstadt-Sigmaringen University is a university of applied sciences with approximately 3,000 students located in a relatively rural area in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The relatively small university is part of the International Bodensee Hochschulverbund, and within its three faculties (Engineering, Business and Computer Science, and Life Sciences) it offers state-of-the-art education and research. It has a strong focus on applied sciences and research, and is strongly connected to the industry within the region. While many of the university’s students come from southern Germany, students from other areas of Germany and from abroad also come to study in Albstadt-Sigmaringen. The Faculty of Life Sciences offers three Bachelor courses of studies: Lebensmittel – Ernährung – Hygiene (Food – Nutrition – Hygiene), Pharmatechnik (Pharmaceutical Engineering), and Facility Management. These three Bachelor courses of studies are supplemented by two consecutive Master courses of study: Biomedical Sciences on the one hand and Facility Design and Management on the other. To overcome the problems faced by many students as they start their courses of study at university, especially in basic scientific and mathematics courses, a number of programs were initiated at Albstadt-Sigmaringen University. These programs include individual tutoring and mentoring programs for students in the first and second semesters on a weekly basis, an ‘Open Learning Room’ in which students can work on assignments and tasks under supervision, assistance for self-study in mathematics (‘self-paced learning’), and finally, restructuring of classes using the Inverted Classroom as well as a combination of the Inverted Classroom Model with a problem-based learning approach termed the ‘Shuffled Classroom’. This article reports on rationales for this approach, on technical considerations, and on experiences with the Inverted Classroom and the ‘Shuffled Classroom’. The process of learning, which we aim to support with our programs, is understood as a complex process. Since we do not have a definite answer to questions concerning how teaching and learning actually work – and with this lack of understanding we appear to be in the best company with leading scientists in the field of didactics – this article is merely meant to present some of our observations, ideas, and hypotheses, as well as our conclusions. These should be taken as points to consider and proposals for discussion rather than definite solutions.

3.2

Abstract thinking as a major challenge to students

3.2.1

The increased permeability of the educational system as part of the problem

A major challenge experienced by many students starting their studies at university is the relatively high degree of abstraction required in modern science and for a formal treatment of today’s scientific and engineering problems. The result of this increase in requirement of abstract methods is the relatively large number of students failing in basic mathematics and

3.2 Abstract thinking as a major challenge to students

25

science courses. This required level of abstraction is not commonly taught in schools at all levels. Pupils graduating with A-levels from high school apparently have relatively few problems with increasing levels of abstraction. However, pupils without A-level qualifications who, with the aim of an increasing permeability of the educational system, should also be granted access to university education, often lack basic familiarity with the mathematical description and methods required for scientific problem-solving. Consequently, a lack of mathematical strategies and skills strongly correlates with aborting university studies before successful completion. The challenge of allowing students to acquire formal abstract mathematical skills to successfully complete their studies is particularly relevant for universities of applied sciences. It is commonly addressed through pre-courses to bridge the gap between school knowledge of mathematics and the required university knowledge. In addition, Master programs bring together students from different universities and different study paths who have acquired a diverse set of knowledge and skills during their respective courses of study. Secondly, studying at university is different from learning at school. At school, the teacher usually knows all pupils by name. He or she demands that each learner actively engages in the lesson, gives marks for oral participation, and often holds regular written or oral tests throughout the course of the term. In contrast, at university - especially in the first semester where basic science and maths courses constitute a large part of the daily timetable - the student often finds him- or herself in a relatively large group of students, appearing anonymous to the lecturer. In traditional lectures, the lecturer simply lectures – in the worst case, quite independently of whether students are listening, actively engaging in the lecture, or doing something else. Students may get, for example, weekly tasks to work on, but often these are not mandatory and the students’ progress is not closely monitored by the professor. The progress of study therefore lies much more in the hands of the student, and for many students the exams at the end of the semester appear far away, which makes setting learning priorities difficult for some. Finally, other problems stem from the fact that, for many students, starting their studies means living on their own for the first time, away from their parents’ care and away from their friends at home whom they have often known for years. This poses a set of additional challenges for students: they have to take care of their own household for the first time and additionally feel the need to build a new social life, find new friends, new study groups, etc. While the impact of these points should probably not be exaggerated, for some students these appear to add to the complexity of starting and organizing life as a student, and they appear to take up some of the students’ thoughts and time.

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3.2.2

3 Activating Students by Inverting and Shuffling the Classroom

The vicious circle

Students starting their studies at a university today may find themselves confronted with feelings of uncertainty and pressures from excessive demands. This may start a vicious circle, as shown in Figure 3.1. It is likely that to the teacher the only noticeable sign of this vicious circle is that his or her students cease to take responsibility for their own learning and success, i.e. students make their teachers responsible for their success – or lack thereof. As a result, students in this vicious circle will request better teaching material, better lecture notes, more detailed solutions to model assignments as they have not yet understood that a vital part of learning happens by solving assignments, not by learning solutions by heart. However, the teacher is usually neither equipped to deliver such carefully prepared material nor is he willing to in order to preserve the opportunity for the students to arrive at the correct solutions independently.

Figure 3.1: Hypothesis on the vicious circle in which some students appear to find themselves.

3.2.3

A university teacher’s perspective

From the view of the teacher, we hypothesize that challenges in teaching students result from the above observations, and that one challenge is to support students in not entering into or in breaking out of the vicious circle shown above (Figure 3.1). While the challenges vary depending on the students’ level of education, basic challenges are consistent and may be summarized as:

3.3 Experiences from implementing the Inverted Classroom 1.

27

dealing with very heterogenous learning groups, 2.

dealing with very large learning groups, and

3.

educating students to actively participate in their studies, and teaching students to assume responsibility for their own studying success.

3.3

Experiences from implementing the Inverted Classroom

3.3.1

The Inverted Classroom Model in introductory courses

3.3.1.1

Idea and objectives

In the first and second semesters of study, the Inverted Classroom was implemented in physics courses to address the following major objectives and challenges: • Dealing with large heterogenous learning groups • Encouraging students to develop an active, self-responsible study behaviour

3.3.1.2

Technical aspects

Different technical implementations for the individual working phase were employed. Most successfully, lectures were recorded as screencasts using a standard 12.1 inch touchscreen laptop and a separate Logitech USB desktop microphone placed on a separate table during recordings to reduce noise from the laptop fan, the keyboard, and the pen on the screen, and edited with the software Camtasia (TechSmith Corporation). For each classroom phase typically two videos, each one approximately ten to fifteen minutes long, were provided via the open-source learning management system ILIAS 2 [INT1]. Each video was supplemented by three to five questions and assignments covering the material presented in the video lecture, links to additional material, either available on internet resources or as textbooks in the library, and the complete text and drawings produced during the recording. Very recently, a 24-inch Podium™ Board (SMART Systems) was used for the recordings. Due to its larger screen, recordings were much easier for the lecturer. In a few classes, especially for secondary material, free video lectures found on internet platforms, such as YouTube lectures by Jörn Loviscach [INT2] and lectures by MIT’s Walter Levin, were referred to. Some lessons were not provided as video material but in written form. Only a small number of videos were produced by directly filming the blackboard during lectures using a camera. Producing screencasts using a graphic tablet (Bamboo® connected to a standard PC) was also experimented with. The different methods, major advantages, and disadvantages are summarized in Table 3.1. _________________ 2

ILIAS is a learning management system used by many educational institutions and companies in Germany.

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3 Activating Students by Inverting and Shuffling the Classroom

Table 3.1: Technical details, major advantages, and disadvantages of methods of producing video lectures. Technical details Standard (e.g. 12.1”) touchscreen tablet-laptop, separate Logitech USB desktop microphone, Camtasia (Techsmith Corporation) software

Video recordings of blackboard

24” Podium™ (SMART Systems) with standard PC, separate Logitech USB desktop microphone, Camtasia software (Techsmith Corporation) Wacom Bamboo® Tablet (or similar) for use with standard PC/Laptop with e.g. Camtasia

Major advantages Relatively inexpensive and easy solution, flexible, high quality recordings. Allows combinations of on-screen software (e.g. presentation software such as PowerPoint or Prezi), or simulation software with handwriting. Preferred configuration. Real lecture can be recorded, no artificial presentation by the lecturer required.

Flexible, good quality recordings. Allows combinations of on-screen software (e.g. presentation software such as PowerPoint or Prezi), or simulation software) with handwriting. Preferred configuration. Very inexpensive solution (< 100 EURO), well-suited in combination with existing presentation (e.g., PowerPoint), pre-typed text or for simple sketches.

Major disadvantages Relatively small screen size. Practice required for presenter. Montaging images (e.g. of the presenter or experiments) into the presentation requires additional camera. Quality of recordings strongly depends on camera and light situation and may be poor. Merging blackboard and projector images into the video can be challenging and may require additional software. Relatively expensive Sympodium hardware. Onscreen display slowly follows pen and lags behind pen position (in our configuration). Not suitable for longer writings or drawings during the lecture.

The technical requirements for producing the videos were minimal (with the exception of the use of SMART Podium™); however, providing videos via ILIAS and combining them with appropriate tests and additional material did result in significant effort and work that had been underestimated at the start of this project.

3.3.1.3

Classroom activities

Different activities in the classroom have been applied. It has proven useful to start the inclass session with closed questions that aim at engaging students, rather than with open questions, in order to avoid uncomfortable silences (cf. Box 3.1).

3.3 Experiences from implementing the Inverted Classroom

29

Questions for starting the classroom activities (‘warm-up’): “Which of the model assignments did you find difficult?” “What was your solution to question 1?” “Can you summarize the main idea of the video?” Time for discussion with neighbour. Clarify open questions. Box 3.1: Starting the class.

Multipe choice - Peer Instruction - competition After the ‘warm-up’ phase in our classes, multiple-choice questions have proven particularly useful. Typically, these were projected on a screen, and possible answers were provided. Via a show of hands, the lecturer could estimate the number of students voting for each of the possible answers. 3 Using Peer Instruction as introduced by Eric Mazur (Mazur, 1997; Crouch/Mazur, 2001), the students were given time to discuss with their neighbours and convince them of their own choice. Typically, the number of correct answers would then increase in a second poll. Such multiple-choice questions were observed to engage students and give the lecturer a good indication of what had already been understood and which concepts needed additional explanation. A sense of competitiveness, converting the class situation into a game and adding motivation for some, could easily be introduced by small modifications to the method, for instance, by dividing the class into two or more groups and tallying correct answers for each of the groups. Social skills could be emphasized further and discussions sparked by demanding that each of the group decides on one common answer out of the choices given. Individual / small-group work More typical and complex physics or maths questions and assignments which require application of formal mathematical knowledge can be solved well in small groups or by each student on their own, allowing or promoting exchange with the neighbour. The major advantage of this procedure is that the lecturer can freely walk to individual students and assist those that need help by giving only individual hints or provide steps, but not the complete solutions, towards solving the task. This addresses the problem of students being tempted to look at solutions to problems when they do not find the solution on their own and thereby not gaining the knowledge associated with having solved the problem themselves.

_________________ 3

Audience feedback systems are available for this but would require a significant investment for larger audiences.

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3 Activating Students by Inverting and Shuffling the Classroom

Other classroom techniques / feedback Other classroom techniques and methods have been developed and successfully applied by other lecturers, and experiences with other techniques were made by us as well. For example, the Active Auditorium method is very successfully applied by Christian Spannagel [INT3; INT4]. In our experience, which method is most successful during the in-class phases depends on the lecturer, the lecture hall, the subject and the class. Ultimately, the method should be suitable for all. It is therefore worthwhile to try out different methods and ask students for feedback. A short anonymous paper-based survey of approximately two minutes at the end of each lecture (“What have I understood? / What haven’t I understood (yet)? / What worked for me? / What didn’t work for me? / My rating of the in-class session”) has proven useful as it gives the student an opportunity for anonymous feedback and the lecturer a good insight into the progress of the class and the views of the students.

3.3.2

The Inverted Classroom Model in advanced courses

In advanced courses, depending on the subject of study, it can be desirable to create a more ‘real-life’ work situation, giving the students more advanced challenges to solve. In some courses, the aim was to combine working on specific questions with the development of soft skills such as teamwork and the ability to reflect on the process of organizing the resolution of the specific task. In the Inverted Classroom Model, only the teacher-centred learning phase and the group practicing phases are inverted as compared to the ‘classical classroom’ (Figure 3.2). Combining the Inverted Classroom Model with a problem-based learning approach (Shoemaker, 1960; Dolmans et al., 2002; Pepper, 2009) further inverts the classroom: we therefore call this method the Inverted² Classroom (I²CM) or the ‘Shuffled Classroom’ (Figure 3.2). To achieve this, students are provided with the description of a work situation as a starting point, and they are asked to identify the problem and work out an appropriate solution. This puts the application of knowledge at the beginning of the learning process, rather than to the end as in classical teaching and the Inverted Classroom. After initially identifying the problem, the students are given time in individual and group work phases to acquire more detailed knowledge that is needed for solving the problem. At the 2012 ICM conference and in the corresponding proceedings, the author has provided a report of his application of this method in a course on Quality Assurance for Master Students (Möller, 2012). We find that, while demanding more background knowledge from the students and additional basic skills (e.g., basic project management skills), the I²CM is closer to real-life work situations that might be encountered in a professional job environment and is therefore suitable for creating an excellent learning environment for projects. Also, this learning environment is experienced as very motivating and stimulating by students and lecturers. Since the 2011/2012 lecture on Quality Assurance, we have also very successfully applied the ‘Shuffled Classroom’ in lectures on Project Management and Business Planning.

3.4 Discussion

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Figure 3.2: From Classical via Inverted to the ‘Shuffled Classroom’ (ICM: Inverted Classroom Model; PBL: problem-based learning).

3.4

Discussion

How the learning process actually works is a topic of open debate. Independent of this debate, however, it is widely agreed that learning works by being actively involved. 4 The ICM with its coached classroom phases provides a method to ‘activate’ and engage students. A topic of recent debate has been the much cited meta-study by John Hattie (Hattie 2003; 2008; 2011). This does provide some insight into how teaching becomes efficient. From the results of the Hattie study it can be concluded that no method such as elearning or open learning scenarios alone will produce good learning results. In contrast, besides the student himself who accounts for 50 % of the learning differences, the most important factor influencing learning is the teacher, accounting for 30 % of the learning differences (Hattie, 2003). We hypothesize that the ICM will be able to provide good results if the teacher or lecturer feels comfortable with this method and feels comfortable with applying the method in his _________________ 4

Cf. constructivist approaches to didactics, for example in McCarthy/Sears, 2000; Meixner/Müller, 2001; and Mietzel, 2001.

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3 Activating Students by Inverting and Shuffling the Classroom

classroom setting. In addition, the classroom methods applied in combination with the ICM need to be adjusted to suit the teacher and the students. Another major factor found by Hattie for successful teaching is feedback, ideally given in both directions, i.e. as feedback by the teacher to the students about their learning progress, and by the students given to the teacher about how they cope with the learning material and methods. Since classroom meetings in the ICM easily integrate tasks and tests, and since the ICM facilitates more contact between lecturer and student, feedback in both directions appears to be a major advantage of this teaching concept. While efforts have been made to formally evaluate the results of ICM, more work is needed to obtain meaningful results from these evaluations. This is evident because evaluating teaching results is an extremely challenging task, and each possible endpoint for evaluations can be easily (and also unintentionally) distorted. More importantly, however, today’s students appear to enter university with less formal mathematical background than previous generations but with a high affinity for and skills in the use of information technology. They also often bring good social and presentation skills and have high expectations for developing und using creativity, but often show deficiencies in other soft skills. In particular, they often lack problem-solving skills, discipline, and patience. From our experience, the ICM and even more the ‘Shuffled Classroom’ technique are interesting methods most probably suitable for deep rather than surface learning and for addressing these changing characteristics of students. These questions might be addressed in future research.

3.5

References

Crouch, Catherine H./Mazur, Eric. 2001. Peer Instruction: Ten years of experience and results. In: American Journal of Physics 69, 970–977. Dolmans, Diana H.J.M./Gijselaers, Wim H./Moust, Jos H.C./de Grave, Willem S./Wolfhagen, Ineke H.A.P.,/van der Vleuten, Cees P.M. 2002. Trends in research on the tutor in problem-based learning: conclusions and implications for educational practice and research. In: Medical Teacher 24 (2), 173–180. Hattie, John. 2003. Teachers make a difference. What is the research evidence? Paper presented at the Australian Council for Educational Research Annual Conference on Building Teacher Quality, Melbourne. Hattie, John. 2008. Visible Learning: A Synthesis of over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. New York: Taylor & Francis. Hattie, John. 2011. Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning. New York. Taylor & Francis. Mazur, Eric. 1997. Peer Instruction: A User's Manual. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. McCarthy, Christine/Sears, Evelyn. 2000. Science Education: Constructing a True View of the Real World? In: Philosophy of Education Yearbook 2000, 369–377. Meixner, Johanna/Müller, Klaus (eds.). 2001. Konstruktivistische Schulpraxis. Beispiele für den Unterricht. Neuwied: Luchterhand. Mietzel, Gerd. 2001. Pädagogische Psychologie des Lernens und Lehrens. Göttingen: Hogrefe.

3.5 References

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Möller, Clemens. 2012. Etablierung eines Qualitätssicherungssystems in einer virtuellen Firma. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 83–92. Pepper, Coral. 2009. Problem based learning in science. In: Issues in Educational Research 19 (2). 128–141. Shoemaker, Harry A. 1960. The functional context method of instruction. IRE Transactions on Education 3 (2), 52–57. [INT1] ILIAS. http://www.ilias.de; last accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT2] Jörn Loviscach’s Website. http://www.j3l7h; last accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT3] Christian Spannagel’s YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/chrspannagel; last accessed on 16/05/2013. [INT4] Christian Spannagel. Das aktive Plenum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y0CZ-C5srk; last accessed on 16/05/2013.

4

Experiences with the Implementation of an Inverted Classroom Course to Promote Key Competences Athanasios Vassiliou

For some time past education reformers and enterprising interest groups have demanded that academic education be complemented by practices that make the imparting of key competences, so-called ‘soft skills,’ possible (cf. Hiller, 2010). Amongst others, these are defined as communicative skills, intercultural skills and collaborative skills, i.e. capacity for teamwork. These competences cannot be theoretically learned but must be produced based on practical values [INT1]. By means of a combination of several teaching materials, the students develop theoretical basics on their own through the Inverted Classroom Model. This article details the course structure and refers to the advantages of implementing the Inverted Classroom Model with digital study material in comparison to a blended learning concept.

4.1

Initial situation

Since October 2009, the University of Applied Sciences Berlin (HTW) has been offering the subject ‘Key Competences in the Intercultural Space of Action’ to students of all departments and courses as a supplementary general academic elective (a so-called AWEclass). The objectives of the AWE-elective are both the promotion of key competences that may be important and useful to the student both in study and professional life and the impartation of the associated theoretical foundations. The sixteen seminar places are assigned fifty-fifty to foreign and German students. Thus the AWE-class is designed cross-disciplinarily and interculturally. By this blend an ‘intercultural space of action’ is created in which the students engage in four workshops dealing with the topics of teamwork, intercultural competence, rhetoric and presentation

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4 Experiences with the Implementation of an Inverted Classroom Course

techniques. The combination of theory and practice offers students the ideal mix to understand and train those key competences. The students receive 2 ECTS 1 points for the AWE-elective. Each workshop lasts eight hours (8 Semesterwochenstunden), and they are held on Saturdays. Prior to the first workshop there is a one-time introductory event to clarify organizational questions and to present a first impression of the content to the students. The character of the workshop helps to create a space for conferencing, selfreflection and feedback. At the end of the course, the students have to write an exam about the theoretical content of the AWE-class.

4.2

The AWE-class as a blended learning course

Previously, the AWE-class was conducted as a blended learning course. Accompanying the text in the university course calendar (LSF 2), a video was created with the help of the eLearning Competence Centre of the HTW Berlin. In the video, former participants described their experiences with the AWE-class [INT3]. Additionally, the lecturer gave general information on procedures, content, and learning outcomes of the seminar. The introduction of the video led to an increase of registration numbers, especially with foreign students. As participants study different courses, finding a date for the 90-minute introductory event has proven difficult. This problem is solved by running the introductory event as an online conference using Adobe Connect in the late evening, close to the first workshop date. Students appreciate the opportunity to be able to participate independent of their location. To enable students to use Adobe Connect, a screencast was produced and made available on the learning management system. It describes the first steps in Adobe Connect from registration to settings of the audio assistant. Additionally, students can use an Adobe Connect manual made available as a PDF. Experience shows that this combination is sufficient to equip students with knowledge of how to participate in an online conference. During online phases between workshops, the learning management system Moodle was used. In preparation for each workshop, students had to complete tasks which raised their awareness of the topic of the next workshop. The lecturer created a useful interlocking of online phases and in-class workshops by integrating results of the online phases into the workshops. This way the acceptance and motivation of students to use the forum during the online phases was increased. In workshops, both the theoretical basics of each topic as well as suitable exercises such as group work, role-play, and presentation training were completed. Figure 4.1 shows the blended learning concept as it had been implemented so far. The mixture of in-class workshops and online tasks was evaluated very positively in the past. According to the lecturer, one of the drawbacks is the time required to impart theoretical knowledge during workshops. As soft skills require a ‘learning by doing’ approach, the time available during workshops should be used solely for exercises allowing _________________ 1

ECTS = European Credit Transfer System; 1 credit point is equal to a workload of thirty hours.

2

LSF = Lehre, Studium, Forschung; an online course calendar system.

4.3 The Inverted Classroom Model in the AWE-class

37

the students to gather experiences and benefit the most. The implementation of the Inverted Classroom Model could compensate for this disadvantage.

Figure 4.1: The blended learning concept as it had previously been implemented in the AWE-class.

4.3

The Inverted Classroom Model in the AWE-class

Starting in the summer semester of 2013, the content of the class was presented using the Inverted Classroom Model. By shifting the learning content, more time was available in the in-class sessions for practical training, i.e. group exercises, discussions, and role-play. As a result, the students had more space to consolidate the theoretical content, to collect experiences, to exchange ideas, and to reflect. Thus, the added value of the concept lies in its ability to help promote key competences. The theoretical basics were made available as multimedia learning materials such as screencasts and learning videos before each in-class session. A presentation-oriented knowledge transfer was therefore reduced in favour of independent preparation on the part of the students. The learning videos consist of interviews between the lecturer and experts. By combining learning videos, screencasts, print material, and tasks in forums different study types were addressed. After processing the available material, students could consolidate their theoretical knowledge with a selftest in Moodle. Figure 4.2 shows the Inverted Classroom Model as it is implemented today in the AWE-class. The online and in-class sessions are interconnected by a specific synopsis of the teaching content by the lecturer or the students at the beginning of each inclass meeting.

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4 Experiences with the Implementation of an Inverted Classroom Course

Figure 4.2: The Inverted Classroom Model as it is implemented in the AWE-class today.

4.4

Description of the learning materials used

4.4.1

Expert interviews

For the production of the learning videos, experts were chosen for the respective subject. There were no firm selection criteria other than the requirement that the expert could enrich a subject with his or her personal experiences from professional life. Through the inclusion of experts the students benefitted from having a further experience source available. At the same time, experts who would deal with a subject on a daily basis could allow much deeper insights into a topic and therefore create new stimuli. A guideline was created for each interview. This contained the combination of theory and practical examples, e.g. a question on theory being enriched with practical examples or vice versa, to segue from an example into theory. To save time and travel expenses, interviews were conducted and recorded using Adobe Connect. To provide an introduction to the program, the experts were given a screencast. Each interview lasted around forty-five to sixty minutes. Each interview was produced using Camtasia Studio 7. Although during recording with Adobe Connect both interview partners were visible, the lecturer decided during postproduction to replace his questions to the expert with slides. The presentation concentrates on the expert and his stories and gives less distractive stimuli to the student. Direct embedding of the videos on Moodle was not possible due to file sizes. Therefore the videos were uploaded onto the video platform Vimeo and protected with a password. Students were sent a link and password via Moodle. In this context the expert videos proved suitable to impart learning content. The theoretical basics were flanked by the practical experiences of the experts. The use and value of key

4.4 Description of the learning materials used

39

competences in everyday life is distinctly presented and students profit from the expert experiences. The idea to create the videos barrier-free could not be realized due to time reasons. However, it should be considered to transcribe the videos and to enrich them with subtitles (cf. Woggon, 2012). These opportunities could especially support foreign students who may still struggle with the German language in understanding the videos.

4.4.2

Screencasts

As further digital learning material, a screencast was created for each workshop to impart content. Special care was taken so that between screencasts and expert interviews no topics overlapped, e.g. topical gaps from interviews were closed or a subject was expanded upon which was only briefly mentioned during an interview. The screencasts therefore served as supplements to the expert interviews. In this case, presentation slides were recorded alongside spoken text using Camtasia Studio 7. The average screencast duration was seven minutes. They were uploaded to the platform Vimeo and the link was made available to students on Moodle.

4.4.3

Print material

Parallel to expert interviews and screencasts, suitable print materials for each workshop subject were also made available to the students. The material consists of technical literature, newspaper articles, newspaper interviews, as well as scripts with a topic synopsis. The learning videos primarily address visual and auditive learner types. The provision of print material is intended to address learner types that find it difficult to study theoretical knowledge via videos. For students who only used print material in preparation for workshops, no substantial disadvantage arose as the entire theory was covered. Only the personal experiences of the experts could not be made available as print material. If, however, the interviews were to be transcribed, then this additional offer would be possible. The print material was made available to the students via Moodle.

4.4.4

Tasks

The provision of content, even if available in various forms to address different learner types, does not solitarily secure learning success. Students can understand and process content better when having to complete tasks or completing questions using it [INT 2]. For this reason, prior to each workshop a task was set on Moodle in addition to the provided material (expert interviews, screencasts, print material). These tasks were designed to encourage engagement in the subject and were adapted to the learning objectives of the respective workshops. To animate students to complete a task in the forum, the tasks were designed with a low degree of difficulty. For example, in preparation for the workshop on teamwork, participants were asked to comment on a picture that showed the roles within a team. Answers were commented on by the lecturer and included in the workshop.

40

4.4.5

4 Experiences with the Implementation of an Inverted Classroom Course

Assessment of learning success

For each subject, the students could choose to complete a test on Moodle. The tests were designed for practice with three to five questions. By reference to the tests students could measure and therefore consolidate their theoretical knowledge [INT 2]. Questions were a mix of open and closed questions and the questions on the written exam followed the same format. This way, the students were already familiar with the type of exam questions. For every answer, right or wrong, feedback was provided after the completion of the tests. For questions with free text answers an exemplary solution was displayed. Experiences so far have shown that students readily make use of this kind of self-learning assessment both prior to workshops as well as in preparation for the exam.

4.5

Advantages of the ICM in comparison to the blended learning concept

The general advantages that the Inverted Classroom Model offers for students such as individualization of learning speed and student centricity have already been described in detail by Schäfer (2012). This section will focus solely on the crucial advantage that the switch from blended learning to Inverted Classroom has initiated in the AWE-class. By the allocation of the online phase for the theoretical portion, the lecturer had significantly more time available during workshops. This could be used for more useful exercises, role-play, group work and discussions. Students were therefore given the opportunity to collect more practical experiences that play an essential role in the impartation of key competences [INT1]. Thus, the realization of the AWE-class using the Inverted Classroom Model has offered an added value in comparison to the blended learning concept. During the summer semester of 2013, a total of fifteen students participated in the AWEelective. Firstly, oral feedback of students during the semester was positive. An evaluation form was created to collect more elaborate written feedback in addition to that which had already been given. The response rate was 80 % (twelve out of fifteen). The following is a short overview of essential responses: • 11 out of 12 stated to have used ICM for the first time. • 8 out of 12 stated the combination of videos and print material prepared them well for classes. • 11 out of 12 stated to have learned more by combination of in-class sessions and online phases. Observations of the lecturer during the workshops are in accord with the results of the survey. The majority of students stated that this type of preparation was fun. This reflected in the workshops. The value of the theoretical content was by some participants only realized after evaluation and reflection on the practical exercises. The combination of theoretical content (expert interviews, screencasts, and print material) with practical

4.6 References

41

activities during workshops (role-play, group work, and discussions) is considered very important for the learning process of the students. In further developments, more expert interviews should be made available to the students. This way, a larger range of topics can be covered and the exchange of content provided by individual interviews between students can be promoted. Additionally, the existing printed worksheets with questions or fill-in-the-blank texts could be offered to serve further learner types. However, it should be kept in mind that the workload and required time and effort by the students should not exceed what is appropriate for such a class.

4.6

References

Hiller, Gundula Gwenn. 2010. Überlegungen zum interkulturellen Kompetenzerwerb an deutschen Hochschulen. In: Hiller, Gundula Gwenn/Stefanie Vogler-Lipp (eds.). Schlüsselqualifikation Interkulturelle Kompetenz an Hochschulen: Grundlagen, Konzepte, Methoden. Wiesbaden: Springer. 19–56. Schäfer, Anna Maria. 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 3–12. Woggon, Helga. 2012. Transkription und Übersetzung. Video-Interviews als Lesetexte. In: Abenhausen, Sigrid/Apostolopoulos, Nicolas/Körte-Braun, Bernd/Nägel, Verena L. (eds.). Zeugen der Shoah – die didaktische und wissenschaftliche Arbeit mit Video-Interviews des USC Shoah Foundation Institute. Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin. 24–33. [INT1] Scholz, Anne-Marie. 2009. Die Bedeutung von Schlüsselkompetenzen im Bologna-Prozess. http://www.forschungsinfo.de/iq/agora/Bologna/bologna.html; last accessed on 31/05/2013. [INT2] Kristöfl, Robert. 2006. Ein Leitfaden für Lehrer/innen, Lehrende und Content-Ersteller/innen. http://www.bildung.at/files/downloads/Qualitaetskriterien_E-Learning.pdf; last accessed on 31/05/2013. [INT3] University of Applied Sciences Berlin. 2012. Experiences of former AWE-class participants. Video. http://vimeo.com/40438288; last accessed on 17/07/2013.

II

Phase 1 of the Inverted Classroom Model: Content Delivery

The second section of this volume is dedicated to the first phase of the Inverted Classroom Model: the content delivery. In the first phase, the learners have to prepare materials at home which are produced and made available by the teacher beforehand. In their classes, Udo Bleimann and Robert Löw use wikis which contain content produced by the students. The paradigm Learning by Contribution is the basis of their implementation of the Inverted Classroom. In their approach, the students themselves create the contents to be studied for the final exam, thereby playing an active role in their own and in their fellow students’ learning. The article provides an overview over the use of wikis in computer science classes for Master students throughout the semester. Another possible content-delivery strategy is the use of videos. Jürgen Handke has been using this method on the Virtual Linguistics Campus for more than a year. He shares insights into his way of creating videos, making them available online and using them in his linguistics classes. He concludes with a discussion of the positive effects the use of videos has had on his work. The use of the ICM in linguistics classes is also in the focus of Natalie Kiesler’s article on content delivery via video. In an experience-based report, she outlines the main advantages and educational values associated with using videos. She also discusses the results of her study into student perception of teaching materials used in the ICM. After distinguishing different types of videos and recording strategies, she illustrates the changes in the classroom that accompany ICM implementation. A common problem encountered by teachers wanting to implement the ICM is the lack of appropriate teaching materials available online. Oliver Tacke addresses this issue in his article by proposing an open video platform on which teachers can share their videos and teaching materials. He focuses on the training of university staff in higher education didactics and gives an insight into using the ICM in the professional training of academic staff.

5

Learning by Contribution – Using Wikis in Higher Education Udo Bleimann & Robert Löw

5.1

Introduction – from Inverted Classroom to Learning by Contribution

Learning happens only by one’s own efforts (Park, 2003). Classical lectures in which the students are merely passive consumers of information are not optimal for learning. This insight was the reason for redesigning several teaching modules for Master students of computer science at Hochschule Darmstadt in the summer semester of 2005. In traditional lectures, much learning should take place after and between the lectures. This should occur as the learners are recapitulating the content through reading, practical or written exercises. However, in practice the learners often have their written material – in many cases PowerPoint slides which already contain all content covered and therefore hinder students’ own writing and practicing. Thus, the learners tend to only work with the content for a very short period of time, the day or the few days before the test. The question is: Do learners retain any acquired knowledge for the time after the test at all following this behavior? Sometimes this is called ‘bulimia pedagogy’ (first binge, then bring up during the test, then forget), a striking term for this type of learning (Röll, 2004). There are a lot of approaches to improve learning. They are, in the end, all based on the development of learners’ (self-)activities. The Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) fosters exactly this. Each indivdual learner has to be more active in reading or viewing the provided information than while attending a traditional lecture. This preparation is a necessary requirement for group sessions with a focus on interactive discussions and applying knowledge to assigned tasks, which both also require active participation. In the ICM, the lecturer guides the whole process and produces and provides all content and material. The next step in improving learners’ activities is to involve them in the content production itself, thereby pushing them to a far more active and responsible position. In this sense, you could call this approach ‘ICM+’, where the learners are producing the learning material (in small groups) by themselves. Following this they could contribute strongly to the lectures/in-class sessions by delivering, discussing, and applying the knowledge. The whole

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process has to be carefully guided and strongly supported by the lecturer. We call this approach Learning by Contribution, which reflects the truly active involvement and selfdriven learning of all students. Several questions have arisen: Does this approach exceed students’ capabilities? Are the learners overburdened in terms of content comprehension and required time input? These questions and other aspects will be discussed and answered in the following chapters.

5.2

The wiki lecture – our approach

The more opportunities you have to study traditional lectures in higher education and the more you address didactics and pedagogy, the greater the impulse for change. With 25 years of experience in traditional teaching, it was high time for that change in the spring of 2005. This was the start of the conversion of two modules for Master students in computer science. The module ‘IT Management’ was delivered with three lecture hours plus one hour practical training in a lab, while ‘Knowledge Management’ had two lecture hours plus one hour lab. Five credit points have been assigned to both modules. We looked for a new pedagogical concept, following the paradigm Learning by Contribution, that is, active learning through self-activity, avoiding passiveness as the dominant attitude. It should work without a complex technical infrastructure. All solutions based on learning management systems (LMS) have been excluded by this requirement (for a list of LMS see [INT1]). The means of choice was a wiki. This is a technical solution for joint authorship and distributed collaboration that is widely used and easy to handle. Chapter 5.3 deals in more detail with wikis. One aim of the conversion of the model was to leave the framework conditions of the lectures untouched, i.e. no change in the timetable. Only a new internal structure without administration, or management issues was developed for both modules. This is an important characteristic of a straightforward introduction of innovations without bureaucratic efforts and trouble. The main ideas of the new modules are described as follows: •

The lecturer is responsible for the table of contents and quality assurance;

•

the production of content is done by the students (assigned to topic chapters in small groups);

•

all content is documentated in a wiki (each chapter is assigned to a group of students following the structure of the table of contents);

•

personal support of the student groups is provided by the lecturer (at least two individually arranged meetings with each group);

•

plenary sessions consist of lectures by the student groups and intensive discussions;

•

company case studies are produced and presented by the student groups.

Table 5.1 shows the syllabus.

5.2 The wiki lecture – our approach

47

Table 5.1: Syllabus of wiki lectures. Teaching Week 1 2–7 8 – 13

14 – 15 16/17

5.2.1

Activities Introduction, group classifications, agreement on dates and deadlines no lectures; production of content in groups, individual meetings with the lecturer, wiki documentation Plenary sessions with lecturing by the students and intensive discussions using the assigned slots of the timetable In parallel: production of company case studies (two student groups per company/institution) Plenary workshops with presentation of case studies including invited representatives of the companies involved Oral exams

The wiki lectures in detail

The starting point of the new wiki lecture is the table of contents given by the lecturer. This should be detailed by a few keywords for each chapter in addition to the chapter headings. This should function as a basis for the students as they start their content production. There are no slides, lecture notes, or other material for the students. In the first week there is a ‘kickoff lecture’ of 90 to 120 minutes where the lecturer presents the concept of the whole module, delivers a detailed walk-through of the table of contents, and asks the students to group themselves in groups of two to four members. Based on the total number of participants and the number of outline topics, the lecturer organizes the ‘group to topic’ assignment. This approach has been practiced for Master modules which consisted of a range from 16 to 33 students. While student assignment takes time (30 to 45 minutes), it is not very complicated. However, it does occasionally require insistence. One (special) group of students has to work on the tasks of quality assurance, guidelines for wiki content, interlinks among the chapters, and visual design. The kickoff ends with individual appointments for all (seven to ten) student groups, two meetings per group with durations of sixty minutes each. The students have to be very active from the start of the lecture onwards. They have to develop and understand the content assigned to them and to document this in the wiki provided (see Chapter 5.3). At the first individual meeting, the lecturer helps with literature, references, and narrowing down the choice of content. This meeting date has to be early in the semester, but also requires some research by the students beforehand to be effective. After these meetings, the student groups should start to fill the wiki. The deadline for the wiki content documentation is the middle of the semester (approximately the 8th week). Each student group not only develops the content but also a presentation of this for the plenary sessions. These presentations are intensively discussed at the second studentlecturer meeting with regards to chosen material, didactics, and design of slides. An optimal date for these meetings is the week before the groups’ plenary presentations. The plenary sessions take place in the second half of the semester using the time slots from the timetable for lectures and practical lab work. For each lecture the following structure was chosen: sixty minutes of group presentation plus sixty minutes of intensive discussion

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moderated by the lecturer. This is to avoid a classical lecture behavior of the audience in which lecturers are simply replaced with student presenters. This structure is very similar to a university seminar where students have to present their topic followed by discussions. There is a lot of experience with seminars at all universities. Some advantages are (mostly) active students, interesting discussions, and a great variety in the layout of the sessions. But there are serious drawbacks: some of the presentations contain errors and are not optimized didactically. In addition, students have a tendency to take their own topic seriously and to switch to a much more passive role while listening to the others. The two individual student-lecturer meetings address the first drawback through the specific help and support given by the lecturer prior to the presentations. But how can the students’ active commitment to all topics be achieved? A possible answer to this question is field studies in companies or institutions, covering all topics of the module, each carried out by two joint student groups (four to seven students). These field studies are a good substitute for the lab practicals that were part of the two modules beforehand. Aims of the field studies are to find out how the companies are organizing their IT or knowledge management internally, to identify problems that have occurred, and to propose possible ideas for the future. At the end of the semester, the results from the field studies are presented in two industry workshops (three to four hours each, with company representatives present) by the assigned student groups. Thus the students are actively confronted with all aspects of the module and not only with their own groups’ topic. In addition, they all become familiar with practical applications of the more theoretical lecture content. Finding companies willing to participate in these field studies is not an easy task. Having good university connections to companies and institutions in the area is helpful. The search process begins at the kickoff event and continues through the individual student-lecturer meetings where further ideas are exchanged. Quite often the students have some work experience in one of the potentially cooperative companies, which leads to a higher likelihood that the respective company will participate. To convince companies or institutions to take part in these field studies, the following offers have been identified as helpful: •

inventory of the companies’ situation (e.g. their internal IT management);

•

impulses for change in domains with room for improvement;

•

access to the wiki system for one year;

•

invitation to attend the two field study workshops; learning about solutions implemented by other companies;

•

joint supervision of topic-related Bachelor and Master theses (optional);

•

anonymization of all internal company data used upon request.

The companies’ efforts vary greatly depending on their interests. The minimum committment is a two-hour interview of an expert within the company, following a questionnaire supplied beforehand.

5.3 Using wikis – a short overview

5.2.2

49

Outcomes of the wiki lectures

The main aim of the conversion of the teaching modules to wiki lectures is to improve student learning. The students are involved in several aspects which they are motivated to work through themselves, thereby learning how to •

develop the content of the lecture (contribution);

•

document the material in a wiki;

•

present their topic in plenary sessions – selecting material, didactics, and slide design;

•

conduct a field study in a company or an institution;

•

present the field studies in workshops attended by company representatives;

•

document the field studies and distribute documentation to lecturer and company.

Apart from the content matter the students also acquire a good knowledge of team work, didactics (how to present), design of presentations, documentation of results, and, last but not least, working with company representatives. Furthermore, this networking opportunity with companies is helpful for students’ future careers. The second outcome of the wiki lecture is the wiki, filled with contents, an ‘online book’ for IT and Knowledge Management (see Chapter 5.4). This wiki is not accessible to the public, but rather to be used by the registered students and the cooperating companies (for at least one year). Looking at the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the growing importance of online encyclopaedias is obvious. In contrast to e-books, a wiki is not just content supplied digitally that can be downloaded to computers and readers. It is a ‘living book’ that can be updated permanently and used as a dictionary. This is the case indeed as the student cohorts of the next semester or year are not starting from scratch with an empty wiki but update, extend, and correct the elaborated content. In computer science this process is continuously necessary to permanently improve the quality of the content. Thus there are always a lot of tasks for the new student groups. The third outcome is more intensive contact to companies which could lead to joint research and development projects and the potential cooperation with students’ on Master theses with practical relevance. This is a win-win situation; the companies support the students while also being introduced to and familiarized with new technologies and solutions for their own benefit. These solutions have been evaluated and in some cases implemented as a joint effort by the university and the company.

5.3

Using wikis – a short overview

5.3.1

What is a wiki?

A wiki is a software system based on hypertext that enables users not only to read webpages with links but also to edit these pages directly through the web browser. The most famous wikis are online encyclopaedias like Wikipedia. The word ‘wiki’ comes from Hawaiian language and means ‘quick’. This describes the main wiki concept quite well: to

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change or add something quickly. Wikipedia is the main reason behind the fast development and growth of wikis that became popular in the developer community only just prior to year 2000 [INT2].

5.3.2

Wiki software

There are many technical implementations of the wiki concept on the market, some commercial and some open source products. You can find a large collection of wiki products in the Wikipedia wiki software list [INT3]. Different wiki implementations have different focuses: Usability, integration in existing IT infrastructures, communication features for authors, security, etc. A good overview of applicable wikis to support companies’ knowledge management is supplied by the Pumacy study [INT4]. Furthermore the website WikiMatrix [INT5] compares more than 130 implementations; here a wizard helps with the decision making by filtering depending on the specific purpose. Technically, a wiki consists of single webpages presented in HTML and linked via hyperlinks, copying the hypertext concept from the World Wide Web. Most of the authors do not have any HTML or similar developers’ know-how. Thus, all wiki implementations use a simple mark-up language. In principle, the syntax needs only a few mark-ups as you may experience in MediaWiki, the wiki software used by Wikipedia [INT6]. The MediaWiki help system provides a good insight as to how to use wikis [INT7]. There are a lot of tutorials with regard to tool installation, application, and syntax, especially for MediaWiki (see among others Orloff, 2010; Barrett, 2008).

5.3.3

Wikis in higher education

To supplement teaching, a lot of IT systems are available. They include modern communication facilities like chat, forums, voice, and video. Most of these systems are very complex to use and/or to administer. Wikis as a potential IT resource for collaborative editing in higher education have been discussed extensively in the literature in the past few years (cf. Hodel, 2007; Thillosen, 2008). Many learning management systems provide integrated wikis exactly for this purpose. However, those integrated tools have some restrictions if you want to further use the wiki after the end of the semester as they are connected to a specific class. Further use is sometimes only possible through an exportimport to a new course or lecture. Thus, the choice for our approach was an independent wiki, the MediaWiki system. This is easy to use for editing and reading. But does it sufficiently support the learning process for the non-authors, i.e. those students responsible for other topics? We have to keep in mind that all students have to learn all the wiki content and not only that which is covered in their assigned chapter. The lecturer is not the author and allows the students plenty of academic freedom in the development the content. To achieve the desired quality, the lecturer must regularly monitor the wiki, not only to ensure the quality of the entries, but also to keep herself or himself informed. Wikis have some drawbacks often caused by the hypertext concept:

5.4 A view into the wiki – the results

51

•

Sometimes the user is lost in between the hyperlinked pages.

•

There is no indication of the amount of content in a chapter or topic area at the beginning of the entry.

•

There is a lack of useful tools and aids like indices and glossaries.

The student authors have to be guided and supported by the lecturer from the very beginning onwards to avoid chaos in the wiki later. The formal quality control regarding definitions, layout, linking, citations, use of graphics, etc. can be delegated to a specific student group which is responsible for all content. To further enhance the clarity of the wiki content, categories and chapter structures as well as technical add-ons (see Chapter 5.4.1) have to be introduced.

5.4

A view into the wiki – the results

The wikis used for our wiki lectures have been improved in stages. The basis for each new student cohort is always the wiki content from one year before – partly out of date and at times with less than optimal or even erroneous text and illustrations. Different students have different views and approaches. Some articles consist solely of a comprehensive analysis and content without a lot of references; some are inclined to a more scientific approach with correct and cited text only. If you regard the wiki as mainly a medium for learning and not so much as a product to sell you can live with these limitations. Thus, these wikis should be for closed user groups only and not open to the general public.

5.4.1

Wiki structure

For both wiki lectures (modules), a so-called category with a front page has been laid out, showing the chapter structure and further structural information (see Figure 5.1).

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Figure 5.1: Front page of ‘IT Management’.

5.4.1.1

Topic map as graphical overview

A so-called ‘topic map’ (see graphics in Figure 5.1) allows the clear display of a subject or domain, readable and understandable by people (not only by machines). A topic map (simplified, as we use it) consists of topics (subjects) with names and links (associations) in between the topics. Topic maps are based on the complex standard ISO/IEC 13250 but are easy to use and have proven very helpful for structuring both modules (Widhalm, 2002). The topic map used in our wiki (see Figure 5.1, right-hand side) shows an intuitive graphical overview of the entire ‘IT Management’ module. A mouse-over effect has been implemented which displays some additional information for each topic, including: •

name of the topic/subject;

•

short abstract of this topic within the square info box;

•

amount of content – the larger the oval shape, the more available content (additionally, the number of A4 pages as estimated by the authors is given in the info-box);

•

relations to other topics as visualized by the connections.

As a result, the learner is left with an impression of the amount of content per topic (similar to the table of contents of a book) and of the topic relations (hardly presentable in the linear structure of a book). To display the topic map, a MediaWiki plugin has been developed by students which is publicly available now.

5.4 A view into the wiki – the results

5.4.1.2

53

Lost in hypertext?

In a wiki it is of great value to see the pages visited for an easy jump back, avoiding a ‘lostin-hypertext’ situation with the undesirable consequence of starting again from the front page. A solution for this is the so called ‘Breadcrumb Navigation’ 1 [INT7]. This can be observed in Figure 5.2 (and Figure 5.1) placed directly under the headline allowing direct jumps to any of the visited pages.

Figure 5.2: ‘Breadcrumb Navigation’.

5.4.2

Quality of wiki content

As mentioned before, the quality of the wiki content has improved continually over time. This has been achieved mainly by the assignment of specific student groups to this task and by fellow students who, while reading and working with a specific topic, left suggestions such as “I couldn’t understand – please change”. During the oral exams taken at the end of the semester, it becomes obvious to the lecturer which parts of the content have been written in an understandable way and which parts are lacking in this respect. The weak sections are marked, thus recorded and added to next year’s students’ tasks. One quality indicator in academia is correct citations. Referencing was supported by a MediaWiki plugin where the author has to write the following tag in the proper place: name, book title, ... At the end of the page, the corresponding tag had to be inserted: . This led to clickable references with a consistent structure.

Effective quality management also closely monitors the content for any mistakes. The question is how to best handle such mistakes. In one instance, an important definition was documented vague and incorrectly. This was observed as the students prepared for their oral exams and was corrected in the wiki immediately. During the exam two students gave the wrong ‘wiki answer’ to the respective question. The students were corrected by the lecturer but were given full points for these answers. _________________ 1

A ‘Breadcrumb Navigation’ is an alternative type of navigation aid commonly used on websites. The term comes from the trail of breadcrumbs left by Hänsel and Gretel in the popular fairytale (Levene, 2010).

54

5.5

5 Learning by Contribution – Using Wikis in Higher Education

Outcomes of the wiki lectures

In order to assess the outcomes of the wiki lectures, we have to first look at the the students and their work. Does the new module layout really avoid the already discussed problem of seminars, i.e. many students are experts in their own topic and have little knowledge elsewhere? Are the students overwhelmed by the great number of tasks? What about the other modules (with traditional teaching) the students have to attend in parallel? Do these modules suffer from the wiki module? What is the effect on the grades of the students? Did the students really learn more and more effectively? A very important outcome of all wiki lectures is the significant improvement of the examination marks. There was no parallel reference group with traditional teaching. Even so, both modules have been part of the curriculum for several years with a lot of experience and relevant data as reference values. Beforehand, the average marks of the students were in the range from 2.9 to 3.5 (scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is best). With the new module layout, the students achieved an average in the range from 1.6 to 2.0 with comparable examination questions and the same lecturer. This is an extraordinary improvement that was not observed generally within these new student cohorts, but rather only in these two new modules. Moreover, there have been very few dropouts and fewer students have failed. The fail rate decreased from 25 to 30 % (usually observed in the curriculum and the two modules beforehand) to a maximum of 10 % with several zero-fail occurrences. The conclusion can be drawn that these significant improvements are a result of the new wiki layout. But was this dearly paid for through enormous efforts and input by the students to the disadvantage of other modules? This was indeed the case with the first iteration of the wiki lectures. Therefore, some interventions and changes were necessary. The students achieve five credit points per module, where each credit point corresponds to an estimated thirty working hours. Thus this course requires approximately 150 working hours (five times thirty hours). From the second iteration onwards the students were asked to keep in mind this total budget of 150 hours and to plan their efforts accordingly. This has worked out fine, and the students experienced project management as an additional benefit. For the past six years the lectures at Hochschule Darmstadt have been evaluated using student questionnaires and the analysing software system EvaSys [INT9]. Thus a lot of anonymous feedback by the students is available. These evaluations from eleven wiki lectures allow significant statements regarding the students’ view. The overall marking of the new wiki layout ranges from 1.46 to 1.82 (again 1 to 5 with 1 being the best). In view of the students’ effort this was not necessarily expected. Figure 5.3 gives an impression of the questions and the marking in detail.

5.5 Outcomes of the wiki lectures

55

Figure 5.3: EvaSys evaluation report of the ‘Knowledge Management’ class in the summer term of 2010.

The content quality of the wikis has already been addressed in Chapter 5.4.2 of this article. The following event shows the importance of these wikis. In 2009, the password protection was not in effect for exactly two days following a technical breakdown. Normally only the students attending the lecture had access, but quite suddenly the wiki was open to the public. On day two, Google searches with the keywords from the lecture always ranked this wiki at the top, ahead of Wikipedia. This was caused by the more detailed and wellelaborated content in the lecture wiki. The wiki was closed again after these days. The public access had been undesired and not intended in our module layout to avoid licensing and referencing problems. From the companies’ as well as the university’s perspective, these new wiki lectures are very interesting with regard to more and better contacts and cooperation. This led on to several joint R&D projects and joint supervision on final theses. There are lots of opportunities for this cooperation in the Rhine-Main metropolitan region and dealing with

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IT applications. Such an optimal situation can, of course, not be expected in all regions and for other subjects. The companies most often participated in the field study workshops where they learned about new theoretical aspects and how other companies work with these topics. This led to a productive learning situation for the attendees and sometimes to new cooperation between companies involved in the project.

5.6

Lessons learned – summary and outlook

The conversion from traditional lectures to wiki lectures is possible with only little additional effort. The outcomes are promising and the vast majority of the students are pleased with the new structure. Learning by Contribution leads to motivated students with enhanced knowledge and capabilities not only in their subject but also in social skills (presenting, team work, project management, networking) clearly beyond the ‘fast learnedfast forgotten’ experience. Is this approach applicable for larger student audiences, for example in the Bachelor curriculum? While we have not yet tested it in such a context, it seems feasible provided that some adjustments regarding group size and supporting tutors are made. A basic knowledge of the subject area is not essential; lacking this it needs some wiki iterations in a sequence of semesters to develop the content in the desired quality. We believe that these wiki lectures are applicable for a great range of subjects and fields of study. With this new approach to teaching, we tried out one step towards more creativity and motivation of the learners. Many suggestions for further steps heading in the direction of new pedagogical models for higher education are available in recent literature. 2 It is about time to pick up on this and to put it into practice.

5.7

References

Barrett, Daniel J. 2008. MediaWiki – Wikipedia and Beyond. Sebastopol: O'Reilly. Bleimann, Udo. 2004. Atlantis University – A new pedagogical approach beyond e-learning. In: Campus-Wide Information Systems 21 (5), 191–195. Bleimann, Udo/Röll, Franz Josef. 2006. Extended blended learning – Innovative learning scenarios for universities. In: Furnell, Steven/Dowland, Paul (eds.). INC 2006 Conference Proceedings, Plymouth. 385–392. Hodel, Jan. 2007. Das kollaborative Schreiben von Geschichte als Lernprozess – Eigenheiten und Potenzial von Wiki-Systemen und Wikipedia. In: Merkt, Marianne (ed.). Studieren neu erfinden – Hochschule neu denken. Münster: Waxmann. 43–53 Levene, Mark. 2010. An Introduction to Search Engines and Web Navigation. 2nd ed. New York: Wiley.

_________________ 2

See, for example, Bleimann, 2004; Bleimann/Röll, 2006; Röll, 2004; Schneider/Bleimann/Stengel, 2009; and Schulmeister 2006 and 2007.

5.7 References

57

Orloff, Jeff. 2010. Mediawiki 1.1 Beginner's Guide. Birmingham: Packt Publishing. Park, Eunhong. 2003. Ist Lernen steuerbar? PhD dissertation. Berlin: FU Berlin. http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/receive/FUDISS_thesis_000000001128; last accessed on 26/04/2013. Röll, Franz Josef. 2004. Visionen Neuen Lernens. In: Pöttinger, Ida/Schill, Wolfgang/Thiele, Günter (eds.). Medienbildung im Doppelpack. Wie Schule und Jugendhilfe einander ergänzen können. Bielefeld: GMK. 134–148. Schneider, Oliver/Bleimann, Udo/Stengel, Ingo. 2009. Atlantis University: Learn your own way. In: International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation 3 (2), 184–201. Schulmeister, Rolf. 2006. eLearning: Einsichten und Aussichten. München: Oldenbourg. Schulmeister, Rolf. 2007. Grundlagen hypermedialer Lernsysteme – Theorie-Didaktik-Design. München: Oldenbourg. Thillosen, Anne. 2008. Schreiben im Netz – Neue literale Praktiken im Kontext Hochschule. Münster: Waxmann. Weicker, Nicole/Weicker, Karsten. 2005. Didaktische Anmerkungen zur Unterstützung der Programmierlehre durch E-Learning. In: Haake, Joerg M./Lucke, Ulrike/Tavangarian, Djamshid (eds.). DeLFI 2005, Deutsche e-Learning Fachtagung Informatik. Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI), Vol. P-37. BonnBuschdorf: Köllen. 435–446. Widhalm, Richard. 2002. Topic Maps: Semantische Suche im Internet. Berlin: Springer. [INT1] Wikipedia. List of learning management systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_learning_management_systems; last accessed on 20/06/2013. [INT2] Wikipedia. Wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki; last accessed on 20/06/2013. [INT3] Wikipedia. Wiki Software. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_wiki_software; last accessed on 20/06/2013. [INT4] Adler, Florian/Frost, Ingo/Gross, Daphne. 2011. Die Qual der Wiki-Wahl. Wikis für Wissensmanagement in Organisationen. http://www.pumacy.de/fileadmin/content_files/publikationen/wissensmanagement /Wikis-Wissensmanagement.pdf; last accessed on 20/06/2013. [INT5] CosmoCode GmbH. Wikimatrix. http://www.wikimatrix.org; last accessed on 20/06/2013. [INT6] Wikipedia. Wikipedia Tutorial. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial; last accessed on 20/06/2013. [INT7] MediaWiki. Help:Contents. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents; last accessed on 20/06/2013. [INT8] Wikipedia. Breadcrumb Navigation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadcrumb_(navigation); last accessed on 20/06/2013. [INT9] EvaSys Education Suite. http://www.electricpaper.de/?id=47; last accessed on 20/06/2013.

6

The VLC Video Strategy Jürgen Handke

Education in the 21st century has changed in many ways; by and large these changes are due to the availability of a gigantic pool of educational resources on the web – most notably video. That the availability of video per se does not guarantee successful learning was convincingly shown by Hattie (2009: 228ff.) where the learning effect of ‘interactive video’, i.e. video that combines computer-assisted instruction with video technology, just reached the zone of the ‘desired effects’ and was only ranked 44th among the 138 measured visible effects of learning. Furthermore, it was argued that video alone may even lead to unwanted memory overload effects and should thus be supported by textual material so that students receive both visual and verbal materials. For this reason, this contribution to the conference volume not only provides a typology of the videos used on the Virtual Linguistics Campus (VLC), the e-education platform used by the book editors for their projects, but it also discusses the flanking measures that support the use of videos in the context of linguistic education at an academic level.

6.1

Introduction

The following questions will be addressed in this section of the conference volume: 1 • What types of video are used on the VLC? • How are the videos integrated into the VLC classes? • How do we connect textual information to video? • How are the VLC-videos produced? • How do students use the VLC-videos? • What is the benefit of using freely accessible videos on YouTube? _________________ 1

Large parts of this contribution are supported by the YouTube-video ‘One Year on YouTube’ [INT1] which describes the state of the art of the VLC video approach in February 2013 and was used in the author’s presentation during the conference.

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Prior to that, however, we have to define the benefit of integrating educational videos in modern teaching scenarios. So let us start with a simple question: Where can video enhance a traditional class?

6.2

Quantity assurance and beyond

At German universities, on-campus classes normally expand over a period of fifteen weeks, ideally resulting in fifteen ‘content-delivery’ units where content is presented, acquired, deepened, discussed etc. However, not all of these 15 units are actually used in this way. Some classes involve exams that are written during the normal in-class time and some classes involve evaluations which have to be discussed in-class. Others use considerable parts of the in-class time, if not whole units, for many things other than content delivery, for example, for the detailed explanation of the class syllabus, for the introduction of the class requirements, for the discussion of flanking material such as secondary literature, and so on. In other words, only in rare cases is 100 % of the available in-class time actually used in a ‘topic-related’ way. The use of video can help here. With so-called ‘preliminary videos’ (see Chapter 6.3.1) we can externalize organizational and administrative aspects and by means of ‘content-delivery videos’ (see Chapter 6.3.2) we can guarantee that content-delivery is no longer dependent on the time available for in-class meetings. Furthermore, in combining these two types of videos, one can create a sequentially ordered list of all videos of a particular class, which can be presented as a playlist. Table 6.1 exhibits a fragment of the playlist of the VLC class ‘Phonetics, Phonology and Transcription’.

6.3 Video integration and video types

61

Table 6.1: A fragment of a VLC Playlist on YouTube. Video Thumbnail

Description Class Description – Phonetics, Phonology and Transcription LinguisticsMarburg 3,376 views This class is meant to introduce students to general aspects of phonetic description and to the special challenges of the sound system of English. It consists of three parts: central concepts in phonetics, English phonology, and extended aspects such as varieties of English or comparative phonology. Phonetics – Overview LinguisticsMarburg 5,407 views This introductory e-lecture provides an overview of phonetics with a focus on articulatory phonetics using examples where possible. Phonetics – Basic Segments of Speech (Consonants) LinguisticsMarburg 14,525 views This e-lecture describes the fundamental parameters of consonantal articulation (place, manner, and voicing) and exemplifies all respective consonants by means of animations and live video recordings. … Phonetics – RP vs. German I LinguisticsMarburg 512 views This first e-lecture about the phonological contrasts between RP and German first provides a typology of contrasts and then discusses all RP phonemes from a German point of view.

Let us now take a closer look at the integration of the different types of video into the curriculum.

6.3

Video integration and video types

There are several possibilities of integrating video into an academic teaching scenario. Table 6.2 lists these possibilities on the basis of the syllabus/playlist fragment shown in Table 6.1.

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Table 6.2: Video integration in a VLC class. No. 1 2 3 … 14 15

6.3.1

Unit Class Preliminaries Phonetics Consonants … RP vs. German Class Evaluation

Type Information Content Content … Content Information

Video(s) Preliminary Information Content Delivery, Micro-Teaching Content Delivery, Micro-Teaching … Content Delivery, Micro-Teaching Information

Preliminary videos

As already mentioned, many traditional classes use, or should we say ‘waste’ a considerable amount of time, typically the ‘preparatory’ first in-class meeting, for administrative aspects such as the discussion of: • general organizational aspects, e.g. enrollment, class attendance • the class requirements • the class syllabus • class-specific assessment principles • the assignment of student tasks, such as oral presentations, data analyses etc. Instead of dealing with these aspects in class, we suggest providing this information by means of a short preliminary video that summarizes the goals, the central topics, the organization of the class, its central requirements, and the didactic principles applied, to name a few. Such a video can replace the traditional class description and can be made available in several ways: via its URL or by means of a QR code 2 to access the video with a mobile device. Figure 6.1 displays this new option of class announcement. Phonetics, Phonology and Transcription for German Teachers of English

Content, Goals, Requirements & Educational Model: http://youtu.be/sjwinyKxljk

Figure 6.1: A modern kind of class announcement.

The availability of this information prior to class start frees the class instructor from having to explain all administrative details to his students during the first in-class meeting and allows him to straightforwardly start with the class content instead. _________________ 2

A QR code (short for ‘quick response’) is a bar code which can be scanned using mobile devices and links directly to the URL stored in the code.

6.3 Video integration and video types

6.3.2

63

Videos for content delivery

The backbone of any digital teaching scenario is content. Until 2012, the content of all elearning units on the VLC was predominantly realized by multimedia elements with different degrees of interactivity. Since spring 2012 we have added two variants of videobased content presentation: • videos for primary content • videos for secondary content The ‘primary content’ of a class concerns those aspects that the class instructor would present to his students in a traditional teaching scenario, ideally one video per e-learning unit. However, this does not always suffice: in some cases, background information is required or specific didactic principles of content delivery have to be applied. Thus, often more than one video has to be connected to an e-learning unit. For example, in the elearning unit 14 of the English phonology class (see Table 6.2), one pre-requisite is profound background knowledge in German phonology. For this reason, the video ‘RP vs. German’ was split up into two parts to facilitate the integration of the necessary aspects of German phonology. The ‘secondary content’ of a class concerns support material, such as the use of linguistic software, the analysis of specific data types etc. Both video types follow the same principles: a)

The presenter of the content must be visible.

b) The videos should not be longer than twenty minutes c)

What is being presented should – if possible – be made available in print.

The presenter of the content must be visible. Whether the presenter should be visible – whether permanently or sporadically – has been a matter of debate (see, for example, Loviscach, 2012: 29). On the Virtual Linguistics Campus, however, we are convinced that the permanent visibility is highly important, since each e-lecture – just like traditional in-class presentations – involves static phases where apart from gestural or facial movements of the presenter little will happen. In order to keep up the students’ attention we give our students the option to look at their presenter, just like they would do in class. With a hidden presenter, by contrast, and a ‘faceless’ voice talking from the off, videos may become extremely unattractive especially if they involve slides with little or no motion. The videos should not be longer than twenty minutes. Nevertheless, even in the most exciting and well-planned videos, attention decays after a while and the video becomes increasingly difficult to follow. For this reason, we decided that content-delivery should not exceed the maximum of twenty minutes, a time-span which we consider to be the maximum duration for sustainable content consumption.

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What is being presented should – if possible – be made available in print. That visual-based instruction alone does not lead to significant learning effects was shown in Hattie’s study (2009: 229). Interactivity and the addition of textual information have proven to be far more effective. Since most content-related VLC videos are recorded using an ActivBoard by Promethean, the content that is (pre)-generated during the recording can be easily made available in PDF format. And the use of this content is simple. Via the YouTube playlist URL, a video can be selected and at the same time, all PDF documents that are available for the videos in that playlist are presented and can be chosen via mouse click. Figure 6.2 displays this VLC option which is available to all VLC-community members.

Figure 6.2: VLC access to the Interactive Whiteboard notes via their playlists.

6.3.3

Micro-teaching videos

According to Hattie (2009: 112), micro-teaching typically involves video-taped minilessons plus subsequent discussions. The ‘visible learning effect’ of such concise instructions is enormous and out of the 138 learning effects listed in Hattie’s groundbreaking meta-study, micro-teaching is ranked number 4!

6.3 Video integration and video types

65

On the VLC, micro-teaching has always played an important role. Each e-learning unit on the VLC is coupled with a practical sheet that contains several unit-related questions and problems. Each problem is linked to a model solution that is activated according to a predefined rhythm (Handke/Schäfer, 2012: 110). Depending on the complexity of the problem, the model solutions are based on plain text, on text plus images, and increasingly on microteaching videos where we distinguish two types: • Type A – ‘Data analysis videos’ • Type B – ‘Explanatory videos’ Type A micro-teaching videos supply the student with general hints as far as data analysis is concerned, for example, with explanations about morphological or syntactic trees, with hints as to how propositions can be converted into predications, or with explanations about the principles of phonetic transcription. Figure 6.3 exhibits such a video where a phonetic transcription task is discussed.

Figure 6.3: Micro-teaching videos - Type A, example: phonetic transcription.

Micro-teaching videos of Type B discuss model solutions that are directly linked to a particular problem. In the video excerpt shown in Figure 6.4, the phenomenon of click production is explained on the basis of a common activity: drinking with a straw.

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Figure 6.4: Micro-teaching videos – Type B, example: click production.

One thing that both types of micro-teaching video have in common is that they normally do not last longer than five minutes. However, whereas Type A videos are fairly general in character and are accessible as stand-alone videos, Type B videos contain solutions for tasks that the class participants should do on their own in the first place. Thus, Type B videos cannot freely be made available on open platforms, such as YouTube. Rather, they have to be kept in a password-protected area of the VLC and are activated according to a pre-defined rhythm. The reason is simple: we want our students to work before they see the solution.

6.3.4

In-class suggestions

In-class suggestions are videos that are produced together with our students. They serve two purposes: On the one hand, they present the default in-class activities associated with an e-learning unit that is part of an Inverted Classroom Mastery Model (ICMM) scenario. Many colleagues, who have little or no experience with ICMM based in-class activities can thus familiarize themselves with this model especially as far as the organization of an inclass meeting is concerned. This does not necessitate a 1-to-1 realization of our videoproposals. Rather, the video is meant as a recommendation to ease first attempts of realizing an ICMM scenario. In addition to this, the ‘in-class suggestions’ videos provide invaluable support for our students, not only when they miss an in-class meeting but also when they want to redo specific exercises that were part of the in-class activities. Figure 6.5 shows an example of such a video where lecturer and student collaborate.

6.4 Quality assurance

67

Figure 6.5: In-class suggestions, an example.

6.4

Quality assurance

Relatively quickly after its inauguration, the Marburg Linguistics video channel on YouTube has not only become extremely popular but has also evoked hundreds of overwhelmingly positive comments. Of course, we like the idea of being evaluated positively because this is last but not least an important source for our motivation. We feel extremely honored by ‘likes’, i.e. positive evaluations of our videos; and each ‘dislike’ (a negative evaluation) does not cause sleepless nights but leads to enormous doubt about one’s own performance or to questions addressed to oneself such as “What did I do wrong?”, “Why does someone not like video X?” etc. On the other hand, all evaluations, positive and negative, lead to a permanent quality-control from which all users benefit. Above and beyond collecting ‘likes’ and (hopefully not many) ‘dislikes’, there are user comments, i.e. postings that users can add to a video. Again, the vast majority of comments that we received during the first fifteen months are fantastic, sometimes almost embarrassingly flattering. Some examples are listed in Box 6.1.

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(1) “Perfect, awesome. Really u r a great teacher, thank u so much.” (2) “Amazing job. Thank you for the linguistics videos. I just watched ‘The great vowel shift’ beautiful explanation. I truly enjoyed that clarity at which it was presented.” (3) “He just happens to be a scholar with the right pedigree for this task, and he does a superb job in his presentation. He is someone who has done his homework.” (4) “excelente presentación, gracias por subirla y compartirla!” Box 6.1: A selection of appraisals from June 2013.

On the other hand, we receive comments or questions that are worthwhile being discussed. Here is a selection: (1) “I read that the feature anterior designates all those sounds produced with the front part of the mouth: lips, teeth and alveolar ridge. So /p/ would be [ +anterior, coronal ]. Now I am confused! Could you clarify that to me, please?” (2) “In Spanglish can't we say that we have a nasal segment from the first syllable of the blend, in this case the /n/ (if we assume ambisyllabicity), which assimilates to the place of articulation of the onset of the next syllable of the blend /g/? Thanks and as always you rock!!!” Box 6.2: A selection of comments from June 2013.

And finally, we are permanently reminded that we are humans and make mistakes. Fortunately, our community is very polite and very careful in their error corrections. Here are two examples: (1) “(mistake: Missouri) – I think you mean Jackson Mississippi.” (2) “(mistake: 1618) – I learned a lot about the linguistic field after I've already heard other lectures but... didn't Shakespeare die in 1616?? (12:45 min)” Box 6.3: Examples of criticism in YouTube comments.

Naturally, such errors occur and have to be corrected. If possible, we correct them immediately and supplement the video with additional annotations as shown in Figure 6.6.

6.5 Video production

69

Figure 6.6: Annotations in videos. 3

However, if a comment requires a more detailed explanation we either take up the topic in form of a micro-teaching video or we even create an e-lecture in its own right. In January 2013 we started a new series of videos in which we discuss the most important questions or requests in detail. Since these ‘Questions-of-the-Month’ videos exhibit the aliases of the viewers whose comments are taken up, they have become relatively popular in our YouTube channel and have tightened the bounds between viewers and producers.

6.5

Video production

As far as video production is concerned, a distinction can be drawn between two general classes of VLC videos: • micro-teaching videos • other videos Whereas micro-teaching videos are produced according to a principle of ‘rapid video production’, all other videos are carefully planned, well-scripted, presentational videos which are supported by a variety of multimedia material. In both cases, the screen content is recorded by means of screen capturing and combined with the video of the presenter (see Chapter 6.2.2). The main difference concerns the screen content and the devices used for content presentation. _________________ 3

As Loviscach pointed out, the disadvantage of such YouTube annotations is that they remain invisible on mobile devices (Loviscach, 2012: 31).

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6.5.1

6 The VLC Video Strategy

Rapid video production

In the simplest case, the presenter explains a linguistic fact sitting in front of the camera. This can be supported by certain actions, e.g. writing on a piece of paper, moving around certain objects, etc. (see Figure 6.4 as an example). Such videos do not involve scripts, they do not risk copyright problems, and they can be recorded almost on the fly. More elaborate videos of this type use a computer as presentational device and thus open up several additional options: One could simply talk about a diagram, one could add annotations while talking or one could pre-prepare several slides and add spoken comments.

6.5.2

Presentational videos

Presentational videos involve careful preparation, in particular, two central activities: • the development of a script (see Spencer, 2012: 160ff.) • the development of a presentation Both activities require intensive planning. For example, the script, irrespective of whether it is prepared word-by-word or not, has to incorporate a system of annotations which guide the presenter through the presentation. Furthermore, the script has to be subdivided into chunks that allow the presenter to pause, to check his position etc. The development of the presentation, i.e. the screen content that is associated with the script, is even more complex. It should not only be carefully designed and harmonized with the script but it should also follow the general principles of presentations including the adherence to copyright regulations. On the VLC, we are lucky: Over the years, our team members have created a stock of more than 25,000 images, diagrams, plus thousands of animations and simulations that we can freely use in our video presentations. Thus, copyright violation has never been an issue on the VLC.

6.5.3

The setup

For the production of high-quality videos it is important to have permanent access to the technical equipment required. If the equipment has to be installed and arranged beforehand, video production becomes an awkward and time-consuming process which prevents many of those who are interested from recording. For this reason, we have rearranged our offices and converted them into more or less sophisticated video-studios where instantaneous video production is possible. Figure 6.7 displays the author during video production in his office.

6.5 Video production

Figure 6.7: Video production in front of an ActivBoard.

The following hardware components are used for the production of the VLC-videos: • Desktop PCs for video production • Studio lights (3000 W) • Interactive Whiteboards (ActivBoard; Promethean) • HD video cameras • Audio mixer: 8 channels, mobile microphones • Laptops with touch screen • USB microphones, clip microphones These are combined with the following software: • SnagIt/TechSmith (for rapid video production) • Camtasia Studio/Techsmith (for presentational videos) • ActivInspire/Promethean (Interactive Whiteboard content) This setup enables us to produce all the video types that are discussed section 6.3.

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Why YouTube?

6.6

All content-related VLC-videos except the micro-teaching videos of Type B (see section 6.3.3) are part of our YouTube video-channel, which – after only one year – hosts more than 200 linguistic videos. The decision for YouTube was made for two main reasons: 1.

The variety of technical options, e.g.:

2.

6.6.1

•

unrestricted access;

•

easy uploading;

•

various post-editing facilities;

•

numerous analysis options

•

the variety of statistical options

Aspects of quality assurance •

the social network function;

•

distributional aspects.

Video access

Among the technical options offered by YouTube, the most important advantage is the free and unrestricted option to access videos from everywhere, at any time, and on any device. In the context of the VLC, these options are realized in three ways. Videos can be accessed: a)

as integral parts of the VLC e-learning units (‘internal use’);

b) directly via the VLC YouTube-channel (‘external use’); c)

as part of a YouTube playlist (see Figure 6.2).

Option a) is the most user-friendly one: It connects a particular video with a so-called Virtual Session (Handke, 2006: 27) on the VLC from where the video can directly be called as an integral part of its content. Options b) and c) work independently. Here students first consult the VLC video-channel and then pick the videos the want to consult. Figure 6.8 depicts this modern way of using video by our students.

6.6 Why YouTube?

73

Figure 6.8: Video access on a smartphone.

Despite the high degree of user-friendliness, option (a) is only used by a minority. According to the YouTube access statistics that is part of each YouTube-channel, option (a) constitutes less than 10 % of all video calls, whereas option (b) is used in almost 70 % of all cases. In other words, the popularity of the VLC-videos is the result of the ‘external use’ of the VLC-videos and would never have reached such heights if the videos could be accessed internally only.

6.6.2

Quality assurance

Among the most important options is YouTube’s social network function which allows the registered viewers to vote, i.e. to like or dislike a video, and to post comments of all kind: criticism, appraisal, questions, requests, etc. Table 6.3 provides an overview of the respective statistics of the VLC YouTube-channel. Table 6.3: The YouTube channel LinguisticsMarburg [INT2] after fifteen months in numbers. Number of Videos Views Likes Dislikes Comments Subscribers

206 355,000 3,000 24 640 3,300

As already mentioned in Chapter 6.4, the community reaction may not only affect motivational aspects (appraisal or good marks vs. harsh criticism or bad marks), but it also

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enables us to build our own community by means of a subscription system: whenever we upload a new video or post a comment, all subscribers will receive a message. This system is far more effective than, for example, the static VLC-community system, where the currently 6,000 community members do not receive messages automatically.

6.6.3

Flanking effects

The decision for YouTube has had a number of unexpected but highly useful flanking effects, most notably the possibility of generating small revenues. Even though the VLC is non-commercial, it nevertheless has a number of supplementary ‘products’ on offer: • class-related workbooks • online courses o

online certificate courses

o

an online Master’s degree program

• the global access (Handke, 2006: 18) • MOOCs (see Handke, 2013a) The popularity of these ‘products’ has increased through the global acceptance of our videos. And what about the YouTube-internal option of video-monetization through videointegrated preliminary advertisement? Here we have a problem. This option runs counter to our goal of generating high-quality academic videos, since we do not want to confront our viewers with video-initial adverts whose content has little to do with linguistics. Nevertheless, by and large we are glad to have made the decision to make our videochannel freely accessible on YouTube.

6.7

Summary

Having acknowledged the high potential of video especially if it is connected to other informational sources (text, multimedia), enjoying the motivation by the global community and, last but not least, having generated new revenue options, we will not end up here. We will develop new video types, we will try to improve our presentation techniques, and we will ensure the academic quality of our videos. But, we will make mistakes. We are not perfect. We are, afterall, humans – and humans make mistakes. But we will try our best to avoid them.

6.8 References

6.8

75

References

Handke, Jürgen. 2006. The Virtual Linguistics Campus – an overview. In: Handke, Jürgen/Franke, Peter (eds.). The Virtual Linguistics Campus – Strategies and Concepts for Successful E-Learning. Münster: Waxmann Verlag. 14–36. Handke, Jürgen. 2013a. Beyond a Simple ICM. In this volume, 17–21. Handke, Jürgen/Schäfer, Anna Maria. 2012. E-Learning, E-Teaching und E-Assessment in der Hochschullehre. Eine Anleitung. München: Oldenbourg. Lage, Maureen J./Platt, Glenn J./Treglia, Michael. 2000. Inverting the classroom: A gateway to creating an inclusive learning environment. In: The Journal of Economic Education 31 (1), 30–43. Hattie, John. 2009. Visible Learning. A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. New York: Routledge. Loviscach, Jörn. 2012. Videoerstellung für und Erfahrungen mit dem ICM. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 25–38. Spencer, Dan. 2012. Storyboards und Skripte. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 157–164. [INT1] One Year on YouTube – Reactions and Optinions. YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf_Gw2IvJXY; last accessed on 10/ 07/2013. [INT2] Linguistics Engineering Team Marburg. LinguisticsMarburg – YouTube channel. http://www.youtube.com/linguisticsmarburg; last accessed on 10/07/2013.

7

Using Videos in the Linguistics Classroom Natalie Kiesler

Learning and teaching with new media has been discussed and debated for quite a number of years now. The Flipped or Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) is a teaching and learning strategy that uses the learning material, in our case videos in particular, in order to provide students with knowledge prior to class time. Even though the term was coined a number of years ago, the underlying principle is not new at all. Students have always been required to study contents before lecturers and teachers discuss and practice the respective concepts in class. Moreover, this is true for all academic disciplines ranging from medicine, mathematics, biology, geography, history, literature to technological subjects. According to Lage, Platt and Treglia (2000: 32), “[i]nverting the classroom means that events that have traditionally taken place inside the classroom now take place outside the classroom and vice versa”. This allows for the consideration of new activities in class. Especially in subjects where fundamental knowledge is mediated, it is now possible to “clarify, expand, apply, practice” (Baker, 2000: 1f.). At first, the application of the ICM was intended where books or resources were insufficient and where the practice of knowledge is inevitable. But then the expansion of the ICM progressed rapidly and spread to all kinds of subjects.

7.1

The ICM in linguistics classes at PhilippsUniversity of Marburg

A number of linguistic classes at the English Institute at Philipps-University of Marburg have been taught adhering to the Inverted Classroom Model since 2001. The first inverted class was ‘History of English’. Videos and screencasts have been produced and embedded ever since April 2012. Basic courses in linguistics use videos and the ICM extensively. Basic knowledge is, of course, predestined to be compressed into videos of approximately fifteen minutes. This is why the author uses videos in her classes ‘Language and Linguistics’ and ‘Language History and Variation (Early Modern English)’. But there are other classes in which the use of videos prior to the class time seems to be promising, as well. The classes ‘Multimedia on the Web’ and ‘HTML and CSS Basics’ taught by the

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author are among them. In these classes students acquire the knowledge and skills required for online language documentation. Other subjects in which videos and the ICM can result in a tremendous additional value are, for example, biology, chemistry, language classes, history or the fine arts. Regardless of the above mentioned subjects, a number of questions arise during the implementation process of the Inverted Classroom Model: • Why use videos and the ICM? • Which video type should be used? • How should the class time be reorganized? This article discusses these questions and gives a short insight into the main advantages of the ICM and the use of videos especially in teaching linguistics. Subsequently, the various video types will be distinguished. In this context, recommendations for the recording process will be made and experiences by the author will be shared and summarized. Finally, suggestions for the reorganization of the class time will be discussed.

7.2

Why use videos and the ICM?

Videos and screencasts are more than simply new media in teaching. Their implementation in teaching linguistics or other subjects is convenient with regard to the mediation of basic knowledge, but also to the practice of particular applications or software. The partial outsourcing of the transfer of knowledge entails a number of changes in the organization of the class time which can be beneficial in many ways. Some of these advantages will be summarized in the following.

7.2.1

Additional educational values

The most obvious additional value of videos in the ICM is the intentional preceding transfer of knowledge. By giving direct instruction in the form of a permanently available video tutorial, every learner can work through contents at his or her own pace. This enables all students to re-watch videos if necessary. As a result, all students receive the same information. In class, teachers can give more advanced instructions or assign tasks to which the application of fundamental knowledge is vital. E-assessment structures and incentive systems like on the Virtual Linguistics Campus (VLC) can assure that students watch the respective videos (Handke 2012: 49–50; [INT3]). The autonomous learner will also profit from this as he or she can study at their own pace. Christian Spannagel (2012: 45) relates that students can feel free to study every piece of material individually during the entire semester. On the one hand, he mediates that students are responsible for their own study success and offers various support systems and supervision if sought. Classrooms are less crowded and the working atmosphere improves. Students with children, jobs, or a full schedule have all means for the successful course completion available online. Sick students and the less mobile are less bound to the location of the classroom which might be hard for them to reach for several reasons.

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The students attending the class benefit even more from the ICM, most importantly from the increased time the teacher can devote to communicating and supporting each learner. Similar to the school context, this factor allows for more individuality in university seminars or tutorials with more than 100 students because the teacher can provide individual support for the students (cf. Weidmann 2012: 60–67). In addition to the increased time for questions, more time for practical tasks and even more advanced tasks is available. Thus, the quantity of the input can be increased. Additional tasks can be solved, different methods can be used, and students can learn by doing while having the qualified teacher by their side, ready to answer all sorts of questions. Moreover, students have time to experiment with their own approaches to problem solving and learn from their mistakes because more time is available and the learner is in the center of attention (see Baker 2000: 11). Similarly, the teacher can construct intentional errors for didactic reasons and can then proceed with a subsequent error analysis. This way learners can learn from mistakes and work their way to the solution. In short, the learner prepares the content of the respective class at home. In our case this means watching a lecture or screencast. In the second phase during class the learner becomes more active and works through tasks while applying the gathered knowledge. The teacher functions as a guide and has the chance to give individual instruction [INT3].

7.2.2

Availability

Depending on which platform is chosen for the publication of videos in the ICM, the availability of the instructional material can provide an immense benefit for the learner. YouTube [INT5] does offer a number of advantages with regard to the publication of videos. First of all, it is freely available on the World Wide Web so that every learner can access the videos files via an internet connection. All learners have the same preconditions to succeed. According to a recent study on the availability of media devices in German households in which young people between 12 and 19 live, the equipment situation is as follows [INT2]: Table 7.1: Media availability to teenagers in Germany (partially adapted from [INT2], page 6). Device Computer / Laptop Internet Access Mobile Phone Smartphone / iPhone Tablet-PC / iPad […]

Availability in households with youths between 12 and 19 in 2012 100 % 98 % 98 % 63 % 19 % […]

These numbers not only represent the equipment of our learners in school, but also of learners at or entering university level. This is why we can assume that all our learners in Germany can access the learning materials we publish on the internet. Thus, YouTube is an

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obvious choice. In order to watch a video, learners do not need to create an account which makes a login obsolete. Further advantages of using YouTube as a platform are that a table of content can be created and that videos can be arranged in form of playlists. Moreover, the embedding of videos in a personal homepage or blog is reasonably easy due to the offered URLs and code snippets for sharing and embedding. YouTube also allows users to make comments and participate in discussions for every single video. Another advantage for the learner is that the viewing on mobile devices is possible via YouTube. There are some more relevant aspects the teacher might find worth considering. Among them are that links to certain moments within the video are supported and the option to analyze the user behavior via Google Analytics. In addition to this, final editing of the uploaded videos is possible due to the comment option (Loviscach 2012: 31; cf. Handke, 2013b, Chapter 6.6 in this volume). While the instructional phase is now ‘stored’ on a platform like YouTube, the formal, frontal teaching is now possible in all sorts of informal places, i.e. in a library, in a café or even in bed. The crucial aspect is that the available amount of time for learner-teacher interaction as well as for peer collaboration can be extended in class.

7.2.3

Supporting mechanisms

In addition to a single video, students can be offered a number of different supporting mechanisms which help students work with the video. Such structures can be realized via the provision of customized e-assessment, incomplete scripts, or the corresponding digital presentation. At the Linguistics Department of the University of Marburg the digital files used for the video recording in front of an Interactive Whiteboard are published online in form of PDF documents and are referred to as IWB-notes 1. The platform for publishing is, again, the Virtual Linguistics Campus (VLC) where all the videos and the corresponding lecture notes are embedded. Thus, students can access the files which serve as a basis for the lecture and download or print them out before or after they watch a video, which is always part of what is referred to as Virtual Session (Handke, 2006: 27) as illustrated in Figure 7.1.

_________________ 1

Interactive Whiteboard notes comprise the information presented on a screen, in this case the whiteboard, during the video recording.

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Figure 7.1: Screenshot of the introductory page of the Virtual Session on the Great Vowel Shift. This unit is part of the class ‘Language History and Variation (Early Modern English)’. Both the e-lecture and the corresponding IWB-notes can be accessed from this page [INT1].

The upload of the IWB-notes was an attempt to counteract the phenomenon of students watching the videos while doing something else instead of actively working with them. They are used as a support system in order to give students a chance to take notes, reach conclusions, or to write down arising questions. The adapted e-assessment structures on the VLC also require the active watching of the lectures, since the questions are directly related to the detailed content which is only contained in the videos. However, unanswered questions remain. One of them is if students actually print out the lecture notes and, if so, how do they work with them? In order to answer these questions a short anonymous survey was executed at the end of summer term 2012. Students of the classes ‘Morphology and Syntax’, ‘Multimedia on the Web’, ‘Language History and Variation (Early Modern English)’ and ‘Language Variation’ participated in this questionnaire. All participants were either student of the M.A. degree program ‘Linguistics and Web Technology’ or the B.A. degree program ‘Anglophone Studies’. Since the videos for all of these courses had been uploaded shortly before summer term 2012, all students were equally familiar with this feature.

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The following numbers are based on the 82 questionnaires which were completed. They give an insight into how students work with the provided notes, but also how they work with the videos. The first interesting finding is that 25 students printed out the IWB-notes, 23 of which did so prior to watching the video. The remaining two students printed the file during watching the respective video. These 30 % of students further declared how they worked with the provided IWB-notes. They did so via taking notes, underlining aspects, drawing own conclusions and using them to study for their final exam. As a last question, students were given the chance to add further comments on this new format. A selection of comments can be viewed in Table 7.2. Table 7.2: Short excerpt of the evaluation of IWB-notes at Marburg University. Do you have further comments on the provided lecture notes? “Having the lecture notes allowed for me to put into context what I understood from the lecture and what further questions could be asked of the topic.” “Don’t drop them, they are good for preparation of exams.” “I feel that with the provided e-Lectures there is no need to come to class  only to do the practical.” “It’s helpful. I hope there could be a link for the readers or students to write comments or questions on the notes.” “It would be good to have the notes in a format that allows to add my own notes after download (so that everything stays in one doc. on the computer).” “They are really useful and professional.”

According to this short survey, students use videos and the corresponding lecture notes to remember and understand the instruction in video form. In terms of the cognitive domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy (see Figure 7.2), learners can reach the level of applying and analyzing by means of videos via the recording of task-based instruction. An example from linguistics is the analysis of data sets, or practicing the transcription of nonsense words. In these tasks, students have to apply their acquired knowledge in a new situation and identify the basic principles and features of phonemic transcription. The last two levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy are evaluation and creation. In the ICM, these levels can be achieved during the increased amount of time in the face-to-face interaction. While the teacher is present he can engage the learners in discussions and activate their learning behavior (Eisner 2000: 2–3).

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Evaluation

Creating

Synthesis

Evaluating

Analysis

Analysing

Application

Applying

Comprehension

Understanding

Knowledge

Remembering

Figure 2: This domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy classifies the levels of cognition important in education. These six sequent levels incresase in their complexity and can help formulate learning objectives. Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy (Eisner, 2000: 2) from 1956 and the revised version from 1985.

7.3

Video types for the linguistics classroom

Teaching with video support can be realized using different strategies, methods, and tools. While some formats are more advantageous as complements to traditional lectures, others fulfill the needs of videos for the linguistics classroom and the training of particular software to a greater extent. These demands are outlined before the several types of videos are discussed and evaluated in the following section. • E-lectures • Screencasts • Organizational videos • Sample solutions • … The videos recorded at the English department of the Philipps-University of Marburg are all produced by the Linguistic Engineering Team (LET) and published on the YouTube channel LinguisticsMarburg [INT6].

7.3.1

General demands of videos in the linguistics classroom

There are several demands which educational videos for teaching linguistics or providing software training have to fulfill in order to be applicable in the ICM teaching concept and to create a significant additional value. First of all, fundamental knowledge should be provided via a kind of presentation. Students need to be informed about the respective terminology or how a software program is installed prior to its use. Before students can use image editing software, for example, they need to learn what is denoted by basic terms such as hue, saturation, contrast or layers. They need to be informed about the linguistics terms

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such as ambiguity and vagueness before they can distinguish them. As a second step, students need to learn how to apply their knowledge. Thus, the provision of user knowledge of specific software with an introduction of tools and features is important in this subject as well. The same is true for linguistic concepts which need to be identified in context. Therefore, examples are essential for understanding. To conclude, there are several different elements that need to be integrated into a single video. One reason is the frequent need to switch between the simple presentation of knowledge and the application of knowledge by means of giving examples. In particular, the demonstration of software or the presentation of examples entails actions by the speaker such as speaking, typing, or underlining aspects; sometimes even simultaneously. This is why a trial before a recording is always recommendable. An example for this scenario can be a video on the basic aspects of web development and how to create an HTML document. For the creation of such a video the presentation of facts on HTML and its syntax at the beginning is vital. The typing of HTML markup in an editor may follow. Saving the document and opening it in the browser can be presented at the end. Another example is a video about the fundamental parameters of articulation in which the articulators are introduced. Therefore a presentation needs to be prepared as well as a graphic. Then the several articulators have to be named which can be realized via typing or highlighting the respective areas. But how can these seemingly simple activities constitute a challenge? The answer is just as seemingly simple: typing, talking, and clicking simultaneously require a huge amount of attention and an elaborated script. The fewer errors you make the less you have to repeat or edit. The recording of pauses and errors may result in the repetition of the entire recording and in an increasing amount of time required for the editing process. However, this editing process is not mandatory. A confident speaker can condone his or her own imperfections. Besides, the goal of video production is not perfection anyway. Authentic and lively recordings should be favoured rather than flawless and monotonous videos. A long pause or speech errors can be eradicated by means of the comment function on YouTube. Whenever in doubt about the level of perfection of a video, ask yourself the following question asked by Aaron Sams and Dan Spencer during the ICM conference in 2012: “Do you need it perfect or do you need it Tuesday?” To conclude, the demands of videos in linguistics and in software training are high and the later processing time should remain as brief as possible. For this reason, the preparation of the script and the heed of Aaron Sams’ advice should both be considered during the video production process.

7.3.1.1

E-lectures

Videos and screencasts can be an essential element of the ICM. Nonetheless, they should be part of an overall didactic concept (Sams 2012: 21). Since their realization can vary widely, two variants are distinguished in this chapter. The first variant is the recording of a real-life lecture in a lecture hall over the course of the semester with students as an audience. The second variant is the prepared lecture recorded in a studio environment without students and regardless of the semester schedule. The features of these variants will be introduced briefly in the following.

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Real-life recording A crucial feature of this variant is the real-time aspect of the recording. The lecturer teaches the respective contents in class while students are present. This synchronous presentation mode allows for the students to still ask questions and causes a special environment which needs to be considered before the actual recording can be realized. Attention should to be paid to the students for the following reasons. First of all, the students cannot be displayed in a video due to legal reasons. Only if students agree, they can become a part of the lecture recording. A second aspect concerns the comments of students, which usually are not audible in the final video. For this reason, the lecturer needs to repeat such comments since not every student is equipped with a microphone. A third point worth considering is the legibility of the lecturer's handwriting on the blackboard, which is an issue in the lecture recordings of Spannagel (2012: 77). Loviscach, another German real-life video producer, utilizes graphics tablets for taking notes during his lectures (2012: 27). In addition to this, attention should be paid to the movement of the teacher. Motion is a characteristic of every lecture, but whenever a camera is running, the lecturer should move more consciously and decide whether his absence or presence adds value to the recording. To conclude, the recording of real-life lectures can be realized with simple and economic financial means. A student assistant can function as a camera operator, as long as he is instructed how to deal with the aforementioned points. As a subsequent step, a student assistant may process the recording. While some lecturers produce 90-minute lecture recordings without any editing, others cut the entire lecture into separate units of approximately fifteen minutes. Real-life lecture recordings can also be processed with more complexity. Silences and speech errors can be cut out or blackboard sketches can be inserted as images into the video. Finally, the lecture recordings can be uploaded. YouTube offers a number of advantages for users and publishers (see Chapter 7.1.2). Nonetheless, not every lecturer publishes his or her video in this environment. Other options such as protected platforms like ILIAS or Moodle 2 can be used in this case. This publication environment will, however, not be discussed further in this article. Regarding the use of real-life recordings as part of the Inverted Classroom Model, it has to be noted that the ICM can only be realized in the second year. The reason for this is the availability of the videos prior to the class time which is only possible in the subsequent year. Studio recording A different strategy for the recording of lectures is the recording in a studio-like environment. In such a studio, which can be a usual classroom outside of class time, tools such as a blackboard, an Interactive Whiteboard, a camera, a document camera, recording software, and a computer can be used similarly to the real-life recording. However, studio recordings are often shorter, lasting ten to fifteen minutes (Handke 2012: 41–43), and encapsulate the knowledge of approximately 45 minutes traditional class time. _________________ 2

ILIAS and Moodle are learning management systems used by many educational institutions and companies in Germany. They offer web-based teaching and learning, as well as a number of tools for collaboration and communication.

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The prepared lecture differs from the real-life lecture with regard to its preparation, the recording environment, and the subsequent editing process. Thus, the prepared lecture requires a well-organized script prepared for this purpose only. Similarly to the real-life recording, the board content or a presentation needs to be prepared. Fortunately, the use of an Interactive Whiteboard eases that step. The content can be prepared using special software, for instance Notebook or ActivInspire. Multimedia and interactivity can be embedded into the Whiteboard file and it can be prepared prior to the recording. This digital material saves time during the recording, because errors can be erased more easily and the data can be saved. However, a blackboard can be utilized, too. Regardless of the board type used, every single action in front of the board needs to be planned systematically and realized with great discipline according to the script. The same is true for every single click or writing on the board. These are some of the most important arguments for the use of a script. Dan Spencer also recommends the consideration of a few more aspects for the writing of an effective script. The identification of goals, the limitation of content, the use of a large font and the adherence to the script are among them (Spencer 2012: 160). The most crucial point is the use of signs and symbols in order to indicate actions like clicks, writing, typing, or painting. These suggestions can be applied for scripts of all subjects and eventually reduce the editing effort. The studio recordings are complex compared to the real-life context with regard to the editing effort. While the real-life lecture recording always continues in the presence of an audience and in the face of pauses and speech errors, the studio lecture recording can be paused, repeated, or restarted. In the absence of an audience, the recording situation can be well-controlled. However, a disadvantage of the studio recording results from this setting. The level of concentration may be lower than during the real-life lecture. As a consequence, the required editing effort can increase. A short test recording can reveal a number of deficiencies which can be adjusted immediately. Some of these issues include background noises, microphone settings, camera settings, interruptions, or notifications by an e-mail client. In the subsequent editing process silences, speech errors, and outtakes can be cut out and effects can be inserted. As a further step, the produced videos can be uploaded to the respective platform and embedded in a personal website. The adherence to these principles results in the production time of ten to thirteen hours for fifteen minutes of video. While the planning of the script and the preparation of the whiteboard files lasts approximately three to five hours, the recording process takes another two or three hours. The editing, rendering, and uploading process lasts up to five hours. This seems to be a lot of effort for the production of such a short video. But taking into consideration that one-third to half of the content of a 90-minute class can be summarized and archived in a 15-minute-video, this scope of effort becomes reasonable. Videos that contain general basic knowledge can be reused in the future and maybe even in other contexts and classes. The most valuable characteristic of this type of recording is, however, the fact that the Inverted Classroom Model can be applied immediately, not in the following year or semester. It can be concluded that choosing the type of recording depends on a number of variables such as time and resources. Every teacher willing to produce videos can do this by simply using all means that are already available in his individual case. Deciding to which degree a video should be edited depends on one’s personal preference. If the videos are made

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available publically on YouTube, teachers probably prefer a high degree of professionalism. The most important difference between a real-life lecture recording and a studio recording is that the videos can only be used as a part of the ICM in the first year in case of a studio recording. Otherwise, the videos can be used starting in the second year. Supporting mechanisms such as email communication, office hours, formative assessment, whiteboard material, or scripts with blank spaces are in any case useful and recommendable in order to motivate students. Table 7.3: Overview of characteristics and resources required for the recording of e-lectures. Environment Possible Equipment

Preparation While Recording Editing Effort ICM Implementation

7.3.1.2

Real-Life Recording Classroom with students in real-time Microphone, recording software plus • blackboard or Interactive Whiteboard with computer and camera • document camera, computer, screen and paper • graphic tablet

Studio Recording Classroom without students Microphone, recording software plus • blackboard or Interactive Whiteboard with computer and camera • document camera, computer, screen and paper • graphic tablet

Computer, video projector, camera and microphone

Computer, video projector, camera and microphone

Poster, camera and microphone Board content / presentation

Poster, camera and microphone Board content / presentation

Script for lecture Assistant as camera operator

Script for recording ---

Variable depending on personal preference Second year

More likely to be high First year

Screencasts

Another type of video recording in a studio-like environment is referred to as screencast 3 and combines the recording of a presentation on the computer screen, the voice of the speaker and the camera recording of the speaker (see Gannod et al., 2007: 3.5). Regardless of the chosen variant and topic of the screencast, careful planning should be considered before every recording. Generally speaking, a simple PowerPoint presentation can be sufficient for the presentation of contents on the screen. The content on the slides should be elaborate and match the spoken information during the recording. Every click needs to be planned well ahead, especially, if the producer wants to change over to another program, _________________ 3

Other authors refer to this type of recording as videocast, videopodcast or vodcast (cf. Schäfer, 2012: 7).

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tool, or an internet application. It might even be more efficient to record the video in several episodes. These episodes can be split and allocated to where they belong during the editing process. But this method is only recommendable if the producer has to switch a lot between programs or if complex procedures need to be recorded. The production of a screencast can be very time-consuming and challenging. During the recording, the speaker has to read a prepared text while trying to avoid speech errors, interruptions or unintentional clicks in the presentation software. After all, the content of the screen recording, the clicks, and the spoken text cannot be edited later on. This is why a certain amount of concentration is indispensable and the entire presentation should be practiced at least once. Prior to each recording, a short test run is recommendable in order to make sure microphone and camera are working and that the lighting conditions are acceptable. Audio and video tracks may be recorded one after another and combined later in the editing process. Altogether, the production of a 15-minute-screencast can take between ten and thirteen hours, similarly to the production of a studio lecture recording. Likewise, screencasts can be prepared with attention to all details or as a whole without any further editing. This decision can be based on several reasons. Advantages of editing are constituted by the deletion of pauses and unwanted screen recordings of the personal computer while switching between the presentation and other programs. Other features such as the insertion of title clips help structure the screencast. An obvious advantage of this recording method is its simplicity. Everybody can record a video of a screen, since by now more and more people have at least one personal computer or laptop at home or at work. Every contemporary laptop is equipped with an internal microphone and an internal web camera. The required recording software is available for free on the internet. The software programs Jing, Wink, Screentoaster or Screencast-OMatic are only some of them. More professional and commercial products include Camtasia Studio and Adobe Captivate, for instance [INT4].

7.3.1.3

Further video types

The distinction of video types encompasses organizational videos and sample solutions as a further video type. They can either be recorded in a studio or as screencast. The recording method is secondary in this case since its function has priority. The organizational videos can be used for the presentation of information to students prior to the first in-class meeting. The contents of a class, the teaching concept, or course requirements can be presented without losing precious in-class time (Handke 2012: 43-44). But the organizational videos have much potential. They can instruct students on how to write term papers, how to give a presentation, how to do research, or how to write a wiki article, for instance. The description of study modules or entire study programs is even possible via organizational videos. It is vital for these organizational videos to provide clear and structured information and clear formulations of the provided information while also adhering to the 10-to-15-minute limitation in order to avoid a too casual way of viewing of the videos and an attention loss. They should function as an up-to-date version of frequently asked questions. Most video producers can only achieve this goal by preparing a script beforehand, which is why the preparation of a script is, again, recommended.

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89

Videos containing sample solutions for given tasks can be made available as another form of support for the autonomous learner. The availability of such videos allows for the repeated consideration of a solution process at the learner’s pace. These videos can be made available either before they are discussed in class or after the resolution in the plenary meeting. Both variants bring along several advantages and their use should depend on the overall didactic concept. Benefits are, however, that students are given the opportunity to review the solution process, solve similar homework tasks and become more independent as a learner. In addition, absent or sick learners have a chance to catch up more easily. Thus, the use of sample solutions in the Inverted Classroom Model is highly recommendable. Nonetheless, the use of videos in the ICM is not restricted to the aforementioned formats. Videos can be utilized further, for instance within the scope of the method learning by teaching proposed by Jean-Pol Martin (cf. Berger/Grzega/Spannagel, 2011). In this context, learners create educational videos on their own with the guidance of the teacher.

7.4

Reorganization of the class time

The ICM does not rely exclusively on the use of videos, but rather on their embedding in an overall didactic concept. The reorganization of the class time away from a teacher-centered approach is crucial for the increasing efficiency of the face-to-face-interaction between the learner and the teacher. Once the class time is cleared from the mere transfer of basic knowledge, it can be reorganized with focus on the activation of the learner. In order to achieve that goal, several methods or learning activities can be realized. These learning activities can include high-level cognitive activities such as applying, analyzing, creating and evaluating (see Chapter 7.1.3. in this article and Figure 7.2), or special in-class methods such as the Active Auditorium, the Think – Pair – Share method, and lecture games (see Spannagel, 2013, in this volume) or the Tutor of the Day (see Günther, 2013, in this volume). But the movement towards a student-centred class time can be achieved via several methods. It is just as important to give the students time for asking questions which might have arisen from the videos. To conclude, there are many possibilities to become a ‘guide on the side’ in the in-class phase of the Inverted Classroom. The teacher has to support the learners as much as possible and give them the space to think and to develop own lines of thoughts. The teacher rather acts as a mentor and enables the learners to become more autonomous and motivated. At the same time, the extraction of the frontal teaching from the in-class meeting brings along new challenges for the teacher. The loss of control is certainly one of them. It happens much more frequently now that students ask questions which even the teacher did not think about before. In some scenarios this means that even the teacher does not always have all the answers. 4 Accepting this new circumstance, teachers can work their way to the _________________ 4

In linguistics, for example, this may be the case when students ask about the etymology of uncommon lexemes, prefixes or suffixes. In this case, the teacher has to look up the respective term in an etymological dictionary himself.

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answers together with their students and teach them how to solve problems. The advantage is obviously the increasing understanding of students and how they think and learn. This is how teachers can grasp the knowledge and understanding of their students and prevent difficulties concerning comprehension in the future.

7.5

Conclusion

Considering the characteristics of the several video types and the subject-dependent demands, choosing the adequate video type is an individual decision which depends on the demands of the content to be delivered, the resources available, and personal standards. In the face of lacking resources and time, a real-life recording with a computer and video projector, or a laptop with internal camera and microphone can be sufficient. This equipment is the current standard 5 in many university classrooms and lecture halls. In case it is not, the own laptop can help out. The board content for the class time has to be prepared beforehand independent of the recording. But an assistant or a tripod for the camera needs to be sourced. The editing process, on the other hand, can be minimal. Then, the inversion of the classroom is only possible in the subsequent year or semester. Studio lectures can be recorded independent of the semester schedule, but they certainly require more time and resources, such as an empty classroom or studio and a script created for this purpose only. The necessity of editing is likely to increase in this scenario, but it allows for the use of the videos in the ICM right away. In the linguistics classroom, this choice is determined by the very same variables. For videos used in software training, a reasonable choice is the screencast or a studio recording rather than a real-life recording. Due to the complexity and the switching between presentation and a number of software applications, a recording with non-real-time character seems most advantageous. In a real-life lecture students might interrupt explanations with questions or the teacher might make confusing errors or clicks. In a studio recording the teacher can click and type and speak in front of the keyboard and the camera at all times without interruptions. This is why screencasts or studio recordings fulfill the demands of videos in software training and direct instructions in linguistics. Choosing videos as a storage medium for the basic contents of a class can pave the way to a successful implementation of the Inverted Classroom. It is, however, not a universal magic tool that can improve everybody’s teaching capabilities. Moreover, not all contents are convenient for the realization in the ICM in form of a video and the ICM is entirely possible without them. In fact, only the contents on the lower level of the cognitive domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy are most suitable for the video format (Sams, 2012: 19). During class-time, teachers then have the chance to realize high-level cognitive activities, or to produce an actual product based on the previous instruction via videos. Moreover, the use of videos increases the willingness of students to explore the contents more autonomously. Inverting the classroom is a great tool that enables the activation and motivation of learners, _________________ 5

At German universities, cameras can usually be obtained from the respective computation center. The only exception may be constituted by the presence of an adequate microphone with long wires which then has to be purchased by the lecturer himself.

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91

the movement away from teacher-centred teaching and gives the chance to respond to the learners’ needs more individually. The supportive character is determined by the learners’ freedom to choose their own place, time, and pace of learning. Videos can be a key element in order to achieve this goal. It is fundamental to take the principles by Aaron Sams into consideration and to remember that “pedagogy must drive technology; technology must not drive pedagogy” (Sams, 2012: 18-19). Teachers considering the use of videos in the Inverted Classroom Model should start simple and use the available means in order to produce reasonable and effective videos which allow for the eventual learner activation in class.

7.6

References

Baker, Wesley J. 2000. The ‘Classroom Flip’: Using web course management tools to become the guide by the side. In: Chambers, Jack A. (ed.). Selected Papers from the 11th International Conference on College Teaching and Learning. Jacksonville, FL: Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, Florida Community College at Jacksonville. 9–17. Berger, Lutz/Grzega, Joachim/Spannagel, Christian (eds.). 2011. Lernen durch Lehren im Fokus. Berichte von LdL-Einsteigern und LdL-Experten. Berlin: epubli. Bergmann, Jonathan/Sams, Aaron. 2012. Flip Your Classroom. Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Eugene, Oregon: ISTE. Bloom, Benjamin. 1956. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Co Inc. Bloom, Benjamin. 1985. Developing Talent in Young People. New York, NY: Ballantine Books. Eisner, Elliot W. 2000. Benjamin Bloome. 1913-99. In: Prospects: The Quarterly Review of Comparative Education 30 (3). http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ ThinkersPdf/bloome.pdf; last accessed on 30/05/2013. Ellis, Rod. 2003. Task-Based Language Learning and Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gannod, Gerald C./Burge, Janet E./Helmick, Michael T. 2007. Using the Inverted Classroom to teach software engineering. In: Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Software Engineering. Leipzig: ACM. 777–786. Handke, Jürgen. 2006. The Virtual Linguistics Campus – an overview. In: Handke, Jürgen/Franke, Peter (eds.). The Virtual Linguistics Campus – Strategies and Concepts for Successful E-Learning. Münster: Waxmann Verlag. 14–36. Handke, Jürgen. 2012. Voraussetzungen für das ICM. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICMKonferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 39–52. Handke, Jürgen. 2013b. The VLC Video Strategy. In this volume, 59–75. Handke, Jürgen/Schäfer, Anna Maria. 2012. E-Learning, E-Teaching und E-Assessment in der Hochschullehre. München: Oldenbourg. Günther, Anne. 2013. Tutor of the Day – A new didactic concept for the practice phase of ICM-based teaching. In this volume, 103–111.

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Lage, Maureen J./Platt, Glenn J./Treglia, Michael. 2000. Inverting the classroom: A gateway to creating an inclusive learning environment. In: The Journal of Economic Education 31 (1), 30–43. Loviscach, Jörn. 2012. Videoerstellung für und Erfahrungen mit dem ICM. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 25–37. Sams, Aaron. 2012. Der “Flipped” Classroom. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 13–23. Schäfer, Anna Maria. 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 3–11. Spencer, Dan. 2012. Anhang Storyboards und Skripte. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICMKonferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 157–163. Sperl, Alexander. 2012. Das ICM als Modell für die praxisnahe Ausbildung im Lehramt. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 105– 116. Spannagel, Christian. 2012. Selbstverantwortliches Lernen in der umgedrehten Mathematikvorlesung. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 73–81. Spannagel, Christian/Spannagel, Janna. 2013. Designing in-class activities in the Inverted Classroom Model. In this volume, 113–120. Weidmann, Dirk. 2012. Das ICM als Chance für die individuelle Förderung von Schülern. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. 53–70. [INT1] The Virtual Linguistics Campus. http://www.linguistics-online.com; last accessed on 30/05/2013. [INT2] Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest. JIM-Studie 2012: Jugend, Information, (Multi-) Media. Basisuntersuchung zum Medienumgang 12- bis 19-Jähriger. http://www.mpfs.de/fileadmin/JIM-pdf12/JIM2012_Endversion.pdf; last accessed on 30/05/2013. [INT3] The Flipped Class Network. 2013. The Flipped Class Manifest. http://www.thedailyriff.com/articles/the-flipped-class-manifest-823.php; last accessed on 15/07/2013. [INT4] Wikipedia.org. 2013. Screencast. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screencast; last accessed on 30/05/2013. [INT5] YouTube. http://www.youtube.com; last accessed on 30/05/2013. [INT6] Linguistics Engineering Team Marburg. LinguisticsMarburg – YouTube channel. http://www.youtube.com/linguisticsmarburg; last accessed on 30/05/2013.

8

Flipping Professional Training in Higher Education Didactics – Proposing an Open Video Platform Oliver Tacke

The basic idea of flipping the classroom is not new. For example, admonishing students to read a text as preparation for class is probably one of the most common approaches in university seminars – and often one of the less successful for various reasons. Furthermore, the concept of using web technology to improve the inverted setting has been around for quite a while (Novak/Patterson/Gavrin/Christian, 1999). However, in recent years, producing and sharing videos online has become very easy and has given new momentum to the Flipped Classroom. There are several examples showing its feasibility for teaching students in schools and universities (e.g. Bergmann/Sams, 2012; Handke/Sperl, 2012). Nevertheless, the concept has not yet arrived at professional training in higher education didactics which resides in a somewhat particular environment.

8.1

Flipping professional training at university

While at universities research and education are often said to represent two sides of a coin, they are actually rated differently. If time is short, teaching is the first area to be neglected (Tremp, 2005: 341). Making matters worse, even if professors assert that they need to learn about teaching and learning, it can be hard for them to admit this (Wildt, 2011: 9). In their high-ranking position they may fear to lose reputation among their colleagues or even their subordinates. In contrast to long-established professors, there is evidence that training in higher education didactics is becoming more and more popular among young academics (Battaglia, 2008). This general statement can be supported by numbers from project teach4TU located at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany [INT1]. In spring 2013, two basic training courses which each held space for fourteen participants attracted 59 applicants in total. Those who actually took part in the program mentioned two specific benefits. On the one

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hand, they valued being able to plan their own courses and discuss their ideas with others. On the other hand, they appreciated the opportunity to practice new didactic methods in a ‘sheltered’ environment. They also welcomed feedback on their efforts. With fourteen participants per class it was difficult to provide enough time for these favourable activities. Introducing the Inverted Classroom to higher education training would allow for the relocation of some input to before class, thus leaving more time for interactive phases. For instance, using appropriate videos showing certain teaching methods could be watched in advance, thus freeing the training sessions for actually practicing and reflecting these methods. Moreover, sharing these videos openly would provide anxious teaching staff with means for gaining knowledge about higher education teaching anonymously. One way to make videos available could be a free online repository closely linked to ideas that are usually embraced by social software. Instead of establishing a closed platform providing all the resources but no opportunities for participation, an open alternative could allow combining existing material from different sources or creating new content collaboratively. This approach also comprises community efforts of volunteers. While other modes are possible, it is a normative choice made by the author to go for this approach. In consequence, this paper is not intended to proclaim the ‘best’ solution but to make a reasonable suggestion. It will discuss several aspects that should be considered for such a platform, for example what content could be presented in what fashion, how videos could be aggregated with further information, and what organizational and administrative tasks must be tackled. Afterwards, a way of implementing a platform accordingly will be proposed. The final section deals with consequences for professional training in higher education didactics that would arise out of the existence of such a platform. 1

8.2

Opportunities and challenges of a video platform dedicated to training in higher education didactics

At the heart of the idea, there is the video content that could cover a wide range of topics related to class management. Hohmann (2010: 15–16) identified four canonical domains in adult education which could be adapted to teaching and learning in higher education: 1.

General course management: e.g. planning the structure and flow of courses, defining and evaluating learning objectives, or describing didactic methods 2.

Communication: e.g. instructive discourse, use of media, or conflict management

3.

Knowledge about students’ learning: e.g. learning theory, learning styles, or global topics such as students’ real workload

_________________ 1

The purpose of this paper is not to request for someone else to carry out the idea and to implement a solution. This paper is a call to those who are interested in the subject to get in contact with the author in order to collaborate.

8.2 Opportunities and challenges of a video platform dedicated to training 4.

95

Self-image and organizational issues: e.g. reflection of teachers’ roles in education, institutional influence such as employer-employee-relationship, or legal issues such as examination regulations

While lecture recordings or animations might be feasible for conventional presentation of information, other formats might be used for different purposes. Recordings of real teaching situations could be used for learning from case studies (Digel/Goeze, 2010), or brief interviews with students could provide teachers with stimuli for reflecting on their own roles [INT2]. For instance, Spannagel uses a video to explain the method of the Active Auditorium (Spannagel, 2011; [INT3]). He switches back and forth from authentic scenes in class to short explanations about what should be paid attention to. Showing the application of a method in a real-life context is particularly valuable because sometimes participants find it hard to imagine how it actually works. In some cases they even doubt that students would accept certain approaches. In those cases videos can serve as anecdotic evidence. A different method was chosen by Birkenkrahe who created a very brief introduction to teaching and learning in online virtual worlds [INT4]. Consistently, he recorded a sequence from Second Life in which his avatar demonstrated some features that could be used in educational scenarios. Although in general anyone can deposit their videos on media sharing platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo, publishing videos on a separate platform would provide several benefits. First of all, the video content could be augmented with a variety of additional information and services such as hints to relevant literature, teaching aids, or meta-data for structuring. Furthermore, those professors and young academics who prefer to learn autodidactically would have one place to go instead of randomly browsing the internet. This argument is also valid for trainers in higher education didactics who are looking for videos that could be used for flipping their courses. Finally, this approach could reduce redundant efforts as well. If there already is a suitable video about a particular topic, it is not necessarily required to create a new one. Several organizational and administrative issues remain. While creativity is favourable when creating videos, some guidelines may be necessary in order to ensure a certain level of quality. For example, Wikipedia sets rules describing criteria for good articles, how to cite sources, etc. Likewise, some templates should be given to provide contributors with a clear understanding of how to structure a page and what information to give. Additionally, some policies on videos could be made, for example limiting their length to twenty minutes or prohibiting the advertisement of products. Further consideration should be given in regards to offering support for people who want to contribute. Although the production of videos has become quite easy, providing examples of good practice can help to enhance their quality. This also applies to online tutorials covering the technical and artistic basics of filming such as storytelling, post-production, or camera handling. For instance, when recording real teaching, using two cameras can be useful because they allow recording the visual perspective of both the students and the teaching staff. In addition to tutorials on filming, providing essential legal regulations seems to be appropriate to avoid possible disputes about copyright infringement or offences against moral rights of filmed participants.

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Providing support can help those who want to contribute videos, but the mere existence of a platform does not guarantee that anyone will actually supply material. Moreover, a platform full of videos does not find an audience on its own, therefore appropriate communication is necessary. Instead of creating a new platform from scratch that has to be advertised extensively, it could be possible to team up with a popular service that is already in existence. For instance, one offspring from the famous Wikipedia called Wikiversity 2 could serve as a host. It is an international project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research. Unfortunately, it offers very limited video capabilities and inexperienced users may find it difficult to edit content. In Germany, the well-respected ZUM-Wiki [INT5] serves as an open host for educational content and provides lots of technical features, but it has a very strong focus on high schools. It might be difficult to attract people from higher education didactics. Merging the focus of Wikiversity with the functionality of the ZUMWiki could be a potential solution. Finally, funding has to be taken into account. While volunteers can help to reduce costs by donating their time and effort, certain monetary issues are probably going to remain, for example expenditures for technical infrastructure and maintenance. A common approach in academia is to write a case for support and hope for financial aid from governmental or industrial sponsors. However, proceeding in this manner often comes along with quite strict guidelines and administrative constraints imposed by backers. Alternatively, crowdfunding can be utilized. This also creates obligations towards sponsors, but they are of a social rather than financial nature [INT6]. Microdonation services such as Flattr [INT7] and platforms such as Science Starter [INT8] would enable any interested person to donate to the project. While individual contributions may be very small, repeated donations can add up to a large investment. Tim Schaffer, who is a well-known developer of computer games, managed to accumulate more than 3.3 million U.S. dollars before he had even fully started programming [INT9]. Of course, Schaffer could build on his popularity, and what works in the computer industry may not work for an educational project. Then again, the project proposed in this paper does not require hundreds of thousands of dollars. Placing a Flattr button on the web page and subsequently raising money for stages of expansion via crowd funding platforms should do the job.

8.3

A brief proposal

Based on the previous considerations, a design framework for a platform is proposed below. Wherever possible, it uses open source software in order to keep costs to a minimum. The widely-used MediaWiki could act as a host for videos and further material. In order to overcome the weaknesses of other installations such as the aforementioned Wikiversity, different plug-ins can be used for enhancement. One favorable program suite of add-ons is called BlueSpice [INT10]. It was originally developed for IBM to serve as an internal tool for knowledge management (Dueck, 2008). Today, the main package is freely

_________________ 2

Wikiversity is available at http://www.en.wikiversity.com.

8.4 Concluding thoughts

97

available and adds several components to the standard MediaWiki, e.g. a WYSIWYG editor 3 to alter pages conveniently, a shoutbox for commenting articles, a more modern look, or a simplified administration interface. Further modules can be installed to expand the wiki’s functionality such as embedding content from multimedia sites and social web services. There is an online ‘software atlas’ called BlueForge [INT11] that demonstrates what BlueSpice is capable of. The platform would relieve its operators from storing the videos because they easily can be incorporated from YouTube. On the one hand, this approach helps to minimize costs for hosting and delivery of content. On the other hand – although this may depend on local laws – the responsibility for taking care of copyright issues remains in the hands of those who uploaded the videos. While setting up such a system is neither too difficult nor too expensive and creating templates is a diligent but routine piece of work, developing content is the most difficult part. Besides enthusiasts who are self-motivated to contribute to the platform, participants of professional training programs such as teach4TU could be asked to record their teaching voluntarily. This way, demonstrations of didactic methods or case studies could be provided. If it were put under public copyright licenses such as the Creative Commons license, others could even use the material to compose new contributions. Additionally, producing a brief video that describes a particular topic relevant to higher education could be made a part of the training courses. As a side effect of this approach, local core groups might form that do not only create content but also spread the word about such a material pool.

8.4

Concluding thoughts

As was stated in the introduction, creating and enlivening an open platform for videos about higher education didactics would enable the use of the Inverted Classroom in professional training. This, in turn, would bring into play didactic models that have thus far been ignored. For instance, there is LdL (Lernen durch Lehren), which is a special mode of learning by teaching. So far, it has been successfully applied in schools and universities but not in professional training. The fundamental principle is to hand over as much teaching responsibility to the learner as possible and to encourage as many students as possible to engage in the highest possible degree of activity. The team of students placed in charge of the lesson must think of appropriate teaching methods to convey their topic (i.e. chalk and talk teaching, working in pairs, group work, discussion, etc.). The role of the teacher consists in preparing, supporting, moderating and supervising. (Grzega, 2006) _________________ 3

WYSIWYG stands for ‘what you see is what you get’; the WYSIWYG editor is an editor that displays text and graphics during editing in a form that closely corresponds to the appearance in print.

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LdL could be particularly valuable for professional training in higher education didactics because learning to teach is the goal of the participants. They could learn about teaching by teaching others. Unfortunately, one of the main reasons for LdL not being used in professional training is time, as participants need to familiarize themselves with the model first. However, this process cannot be completed in courses where time of attendance is short anyway. Flipping the classroom may be just what is needed to free that time – one more reason to create and share videos on higher education didactics. Let’s get started!

8.5

References

Battaglia, Santina. 2008. Auf dem Vormarsch – die Hochschuldidaktik bahnt sich ihren Weg. In: Forschung und Lehre 15 (9), 602–603. Bergmann, Jonathan/Sams, Aaron. 2012. Flip Your Classroom. Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Eugene, Oregon: ISTE. Digel, Sabine/Goeze, Annika. 2010. Umsetzung des Fortbildungskonzepts und Aufgaben der Moderator/innen. In: Schrader, Josef/Hohmann, Reinhard/Hartz, Stefanie (eds.). Mediengestützte Fallarbeit. Konzepte, Erfahrungen und Befunde zur Kompetenzentwicklung von Erwachsenenbildnern. Bielefeld: Bertelsmann. 147– 166. Dueck, Gunter. 2008. Bluepedia. In: Informatik-Spektrum 31 (3), 262–269. Grzega, Joachim. 2006. Developing more than just linguistic competence. The model LdL for teaching foreign languages (with a note on Basic Global English). In: Humanising Language Teaching 8 (5). http://www.hltmag.co.uk/sep06/mart01.htm; last accessed on 11/05/2013. Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. Hohmann, Reinhard. 2010. Der Fortbildungsbedarf von Lehrenden aus Sicht der KBE. In: Schrader, Josef/Hohmann, Reinhard/Hartz, Stefanie (eds.). Mediengestützte Fallarbeit. Konzepte, Erfahrungen und Befunde zur Kompetenzentwicklung von Erwachsenenbildnern. Bielefeld: Bertelsmann. 9–24. Novak, Gregor M./Gavrin, Andrew D./Patterson, Evelyn/Christian, Wolfgang. 1999. Just-in-Time Teaching: Blended Active Learning with Web Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Spannagel, Christian. 2011. Das aktive Plenum in Mathematikvorlesungen. In: Berger, Lutz/Grzega, Joachim/Spannagel, Christian (eds.). 2011. Lernen durch Lehren im Fokus. Berichte von LdL-Einsteigern und LdL-Experten. Berlin: epubli. 97–104. Tremp, Peter. 2005. Verknüpfung von Lehre und Forschung: Eine universitäre Tradition als didaktische Herausforderung. In: Beiträge zur Lehrerbildung 23 (3), 339–348. Wildt, Johannes. 2011. „Die Hochschuldidaktik muss Teil des strategischen Managements sein“. In: Kirchgeßner, Kilian (ed.). Gute Lehre. Frischer Wind an deutschen Hochschulen. Bonn: Hochschulrektorenkonferenz. 8–9. [INT1] TU Braunschweig. 2013. Teach4TU – Lehren Lernen im Team. http://www.tubraunschweig.de/teach4tu; last accessed on 11/05/2013.

8.5 References

99

[INT2] Berger, Lutz. 2012. Bill Dung will’s wissen (“Was erwartet ihr von einem guten Lehrer?”). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PKjkJS-dvo; last accessed on 11/05/2013. [INT3] Spannagel, Christian. 2012. Das Aktive Plenum. Mathematikvorlesungen einmal anders. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y0CZ-C5srk; last accessed on 11/05/2013. [INT4] Birkenkrahe, Marcus. 2011. Second Life - HWR Island. http://vimeo.com/19806537; last accessed on 11/05/2013. [INT5] ZUM-Wiki. 2013. http://wiki.zum.de; last accessed on 11/05/2013. [INT6] Wenzlaff, Karsten. 2012. Crowdfunding in der Wissenschaft. http://www.ikosom.de/2012/08/31/crowdfunding-in-der-wissenschaft; last accessed on 11/05/2013. [INT7] Flattr. http://www.flattr.com; last accessed on 11/05/2013. [INT8] ScienceStarter. http://www.sciencestarter.de; last accessed on 11/05/2013. [INT9] Kickstarter. 2012. Double Fine Adventure. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doublefine/double-fine-adventure; last accessed on 11/05/2013. [INT10] BlueSpice. http://www.blue-spice.org; last accessed on 11/05/2013. [INT11] BlueForge. http://www.blueforge.biz; last accessed on 11/05/2013.

III Phase 2 of the Inverted Classroom Model: In-Class Activities In the Inverted Classroom, the in-class session constitutes a new challenge to educators. By moving content delivery outside of the classroom, there is new room for practice, questions, transfer tasks, and experiments. Anne Günther’s approach to tackling this new situation is the Tutor of the Day. In this concept, students act as tutors who develop teaching materials for their fellow students and guide them through the learning process. She developed this new approach in order to allow learners to apply and evolve their skills during the in-class session. Her article concludes with the perspective of the students towards this teaching scenario. Creating an engaging learning environment is also in the focus of the article by Christian Spannagel and Janna Spannagel. Their goal was to improve learner activation during the inclass phase. In order to achieve this goal, they developed and tested several methods such as the Active Auditorium and lecture games. They reflect on their experiences with the Think – Pair – Share method and give hints for a successful reorganization of the in-class phase. An important aspect in implementing the ICM is linking the pre-class preparation to the inclass activities. This can be achieved by using audience response systems (ARS), as discussed by Leonie Wiemeyer. These tools can be used to create online polls and surveys which allow for immediate feedback on the learner’s understanding and proficiency. The results can then be used to tailor the in-class session to the learners’ needs. ARSs can be integrated into the ICM in conjunction with Peer Instruction in order to create an interactive learning environment.

9

Tutor of the Day – A New Didactic Concept for the Practice Phase of ICM-Based Teaching Anne Günther

The Tutor of the Day concept is a collaborative, skills-oriented concept for performing exercises within the attendance period of ICM-based or ICM-related teaching. In every inclass session, changing groups of three to five so-called Tutors of the Day conduct exercises with their fellow students for a period of approximately twenty minutes. The concept aims are to activate medium to large groups of students in the joint practice phase of lessons and to encourage the in-depth exploration of topics. At the same time, it improves skills in the area of team-based knowledge management. The present article offers insights into the Tutor of the Day concept, an innovative didactic concept, based on examples of its application. It describes both the development and the application, the learners’ skills involved in the process, and an evaluation of the concept based on empirical assessment.

9.1

Development of the Tutor of the Day concept

Let us first illustrate the development of the concept. Experience has shown that students tend to ask few questions concerning the contents of a course in front of the entire group during the attendance period, particularly in the context of heterogeneous groups. This is also the case when exercises are presented by the instructors. The Tutor of the Day concept aims to facilitate instruction even of large groups of different students, in particular when dealing with students’ newly acquired knowledge, and to encourage a mutual exchange among students and instructors. Moreover, the concept offers a good opportunity to utilize student diversity and creativity to help fellow students in their process of learning. The Tutor of the Day concept enables these benefits by having students create training materials for their fellow students, which they then utilize themselves in exercises in small groups. This didactic concept was developed by the author of the present essay and is based on the principles of the ICM, according to which students prepare for classes with the aid of resource materials made available by their instructor. The joint in-class sessions with instructors and students are used for discussions and intensified work, especially on newly

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acquired skills. At the same time, the Tutor of the Day concept distances itself from instructor-centred teaching (cf. Becker/Watts, 1996, cited in Platt et al., 2000: 37). Another theoretical component that influenced the development of the Tutor of the Day concept was the fundamental idea of problem-based learning (Barrows/Tamblyn, 1980). This idea promotes the solving of practice-oriented problems by small groups of students, in medical, technical or legal fields. Students thereby benefit from both the technical and methodological expertise of other group members. Group work is usually supervised by tutors, thus giving the Tutor of the Day concept its name. Authentic, problem-based tasks are suitable for semantization, acquisition, and intense processing of knowledge through multifaceted contemplation – not only when teaching application-oriented subjects. Thus, theoretical questions can be embedded in problemoriented exercises as well. To give an example from the field of phonetics and phonology, different definitions of sounds or other complex issues can be demonstrated and discussed in their systematic application, both in problem areas and fields of application. On the students’ joint path to knowledge, the diversity of teachers and fellow students may prove helpful. Apart from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, this diversity may derive from the variety of learner types, interests, and experiences, as well as abilities and skills among students (cf. Bartlett, 1996). Amongst others, the article by Lage, Platt and Teglia (2000) on the ICM suggests means of bridging the differences between students and teachers, but also between students themselves. In this article (2000: 39), various teaching and learning methods are put forward, such as lecturing, giving demonstrations for experimental learners, setting group tasks that place value on collaboration and cooperation as well as autonomous learning, all of which can be employed in different ways. A spectrum of variable possibilities within individual teaching styles can be implemented through modification of these teaching and learning methods (cf. Becker/Watts, 1995: 699, cited in Platt et al., 2000: 31). The benefits of using varying teaching styles are reflected in improved performances of students, for example in economics classes (cf. Bartlett, 1996, cited in Platt et al., 2000: 31). Learning events can, of course, also be controlled individually by the students. Thus students can concentrate on the use of various resources and tools such as the primary use of texts or multimedia representations, or decide to focus either on examples or exercises. The Tutor of the Day concept combines the possibilities of the ICM with the principles of problem-based learning and utilizes the diversity of the individuals encountered in large groups as a source of inspiration. The concept has been applied in seminars at the department of English Linguistics at the University of Marburg for eight semesters. The following section depicts the application of the Tutor of the Day concept.

9.2

Application

The implementation of the Tutor of the Day concept is carried out in three stages: initial preparation, development of the materials, and finally the implementation of the concept. The three levels will be introduced in the following sections.

9.2 Application

9.2.1

105

Preparation – organizational input

In the first step, a brief outline of the Tutor of the Day concept is provided at the beginning of the semester. Small groups of students who wish to act as ‘tutors of the day’ once during the semester get together according to both topic and course schedule. Alternatively, for other contexts similar to ICM-related teaching, Bartlett (1996: 149) suggests that the teachers generally set up working groups. In many cases, the tutors continue working as a learning group after their joint course-related activities, sometimes even beyond the semester.

9.2.2

Developing the exercise material

Approximately two to three weeks prior to their appointed date, the tutors develop material for exercises individually or as a group which they pass on to the course instructor several days before the distribution and application of the material in class. These files contain exercises with solutions as well as accurate bibliographic information and a schedule for implementation in class. The tutors prepare the content and the teaching of the exercises, research the basic terms and their pronunciation, and organize additional supporting material. The formats of the exercises range from questions on definitions, categorizations etc., transfer-based matching-exercises and cloze tests to quizzes, discussion tasks and other materials. The main focus is on application-oriented objects, most of which can be implemented through the format of analysis tasks on sound, video, or text examples. The use of several successive learning stations is very popular, and students attend different stations to analyze and work on exercise material. The following example of a teaching unit on Australian and New Zealand English from the advanced seminar ‘Varieties of English’ in the winter semester of 2012/13 at the University of Marburg shall serve to illustrate the station work exercises. The stations contained exercises on the core areas of Australian and New Zealand English and led up to a listening task at the last station. In this task the students were supposed to analyze a speech by former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, taking into consideration linguistic and culture-specific aspects of content. Figure 9.1 shows a slide of a student PowerPoint presentation which was used as an overview of the learning stations.

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9 Tutor of the Day – A New Didactic Concept for the Practice Phase

Figure 9.1: Overview of the tutors of the day’s learning stations, example from a course in the winter semester 2012/2013.

The tasks should always motivate and activate the other students. Authentic, complex transfer-tasks are especially suitable as they give the incentive to apply newly acquired knowledge on the one hand and to solve more or less real problems on the other. Learning thus becomes cooperative and reflexive. Within the framework of their team, the students work independently and experience and improve their own skills as well as those of the other group members. The steps to solving complex tasks should be emphasized as clearly as possible. Individual sub-tasks, especially in analytical tasks, can lead to a global solution and help make the methodology apparent.

9.2.3

Implementation

Once the teacher has completed a lesson or a thematic section, the tutors of the day have about twenty minutes to implement their conceived exercises. All kinds of tools and resources can be used for explanations, visualizations and demonstrations. For example, dictionaries, exercise books, notes, computers or smartphones can be utilized. Blackboards, Interactive Whiteboards, overhead projectors, audio devices as well as posters, paper, cardboard, pens etc. can be used as means of presentation. During the supervised joint work on tasks, the methodological approach should be kept as transparent as possible for the fellow students so that participants can also learn from each other in the area of methodological skills. The exchange amongst and between students and tutors fulfils several different functions. The students quite often discover knowledge and comprehension gaps when explaining newly-acquired material. At the same time, other students’ descriptions can often be helpful in exposing a student’s own weaknesses while also highlighting possible difficulties in the explanations of others. Moreover, students frequently discover interesting new aspects of the subject matter in these exchanges as well

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as parallels to other components resulting, for instance, from other classes or experiences. The respective concepts can be discussed in a collaborative analysis. The resulting change of perspective leads to semantization, i.e. a better appreciation of the meaning of the material and a deeper processing of new information. Having been completed in small groups, these exercises often lead to a competition between two larger groups. This competition can take place, for example, in the form of a quiz in which two groups of participants compete by answering questions from different thematic areas and with varying degrees of difficulty and are awarded points accordingly. Students have shown a lot of enthusiasm and ambition in this process. The instructor makes himself or herself available to student questions arising from the joint discussion in solving the tasks and observes the small groups’ activities. The evaluation of the students’ performance is based on the material handed in prior to the class as well as on the execution of the group work and refers to the tutors’ individual performances (cf. Clark/Mayer, 2011: 282).

9.3

Skills

The Tutor of the Day concept is highly skills-oriented. First of all, specialized skills are involved in focusing on problem solving and evaluating answers, but also on “knowledge acquisition and the comprehension, application and analysis of new contents” (Braun, 2008: 56). Thus students can discuss their understanding of specific objects of learning and apply their newly acquired knowledge and skills in joint transfer exercises. The solutions reached in this process are worked on in groups. This applies to both the tutors and their fellow students involved in the group work. In addition, the tutors gain a deeper insight into specific topics. Secondly, the didactic concept comprises methodological skills for both the tutors and other participants that relate to task-oriented planning and mastery of relevant work techniques (Braun, 2008: 57) in their discipline of study and beyond. Accordingly, the different approaches of applied learning and working strategies should be made as transparent and comprehensible as possible when presented to the other students. The tutors, moreover, have to make use of their presentation skills. As the process includes making the best possible use of resources, “effective skills of searching information and solving problems” (Braun, 2008: 57) are also gained. What is remarkable in this regard is that students often not only discuss the specific solution to the task at hand, but also swap ideas on how to cope with the wealth of material or how specific skills are best attained or improved. Thirdly, the Tutor of the Day concept requires social skills. In this context, these consist of the student ability and willingness to “stand up for and achieve their own goals in a responsible manner, without disregarding the interests of others” (Braun, 2008: 58). In this regard, “communicative and cooperative skills” (ibid.) are very important. In the application one can observe that group members often defend their own views on and interpretations of issues against those of others. This also means, especially for tutors, that arguments have to be brought forward successfully.

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Fourthly, the concept involves all students’ personal skills. This refers to the “willingness to concern themselves with the learning content and to develop an interest in their studies […]” (Braun, 2008: 60). Lifelong learning also means participating in “advanced learning processes” (ibid.) independently and responsibly. Study-related personal skills are also always part of one’s own life planning. What can be observed, for example, is that often questions are exchanged on the additional use of the subject matter.

9.4

Sample exercise

To illustrate the Tutor of the Day concept, an example will be given of an exercise implemented by students in the course ‘Morphology and Syntax’ in the 2013 summer semester. Five tutors of the day developed station exercises for 32 students on the topic of sentence elements as part of the syntax component. In a lecture hall with a seating capacity of 110, four stations were set up for the solution of the four following tasks: (1) allocation of word examples to formal word categories (word classes), (2) phrase analysis, (3) clause analysis, (4) functional sentence analysis. All stations from word to sentence analysis were set up in consecutive order. While working on the individual exercises, the students and tutors jointly resolved questions, deepened their knowledge, and developed solutions. Four to seven students gathered around one or two tutors to work on the tasks (see Figure 9.2). At the last station, for example, they labelled plain-coloured cards with the word classes occurring in the sentence to be analyzed and placed these above the respective words of the sentence. Then, cards of a different colour were labelled with the phrases and placed accordingly as annotations to the sentence. The same was true for the clause analysis until the sentence was finally categorized verbally, for example, as a multiple compound sentence.

9.4 Sample exercise

109

Figure 9.2: Groups of students working together on various tasks in the class ‘Morphology and Syntax’.

Figure 9.3: Example of an exercise from the course ‘Morphology and Syntax’ in the summer semester 2012/2013.

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9.5

9 Tutor of the Day – A New Didactic Concept for the Practice Phase

Students’ evaluation of the Tutor of the Day concept

By using an online survey consisting of a written response to an open-ended question which was executed by means of the open access tool LimeSurvey, students’ opinions on the Tutor of the Day concept were collected. The survey took place in four courses of the English Linguistics department at the end of the 2013 summer semester. The students’ opinions are reflected by open comments. The following two are cited as representative examples: (1) I think the Tutor of the Day concept is a great idea, but teacher-centred parts are as important as group-work. The teacher is the one who knows most about the topics that I want to learn and it’s his task to teach. But the Tutor of the Day is a good idea for exercises and repetition! (2) I think the Tutor of the Day is a good way to make a class more interesting. I learned more about Morphology and Syntax apart from the VLC. Furthermore it’s more interactive because of the exercises of the groups and you actually get something to do and you do not just sit around and listen most of the time to the teacher. I personally think it's a great idea and makes a class even better. Box 9.1: Excerpts from the open comments section of the Tutor of the Day survey.

The students’ evaluations show that the concept’s application in practice phases has proven to be highly rewarding for the learners.

9.6

Teachers’ evaluation of the Tutor of the Day concept

Teachers value it highly when students activate each other’s learning. The Tutor of the Day concept simultaneously encourages cooperation and playful competition between the students. Moreover, teachers also appreciate accumulating such a wealth of diverse and content-rich material that they can put to future use.

9.7

Conclusion

The Tutor of the Day concept offers the possibility of fulfilling individual learners’ needs within large heterogeneous groups of students. The concept is collaborative and skillsoriented and has been developed for application in the context of ICM-based teaching. In practice, a few Tutors of the Day solve joint transfer exercises together with students in class. All members of these learning groups build up specialized and methodological skills as well as social and personal skills which are relevant for future contexts. The results of an evaluation show a positive perspective from the students towards the concept. Several

9.8 References

111

colleagues have already adopted the concept, and they are very pleased with the improvement of students’ learning processes as well as the outcomes. Altogether, the interaction- and skills-based concept enriches the methodological inventory of the ICM. Moreover, this didactic concept can also be implemented within interactive phases of seminar-based university classes in other teaching and learning scenarios or subjects other than English Linguistics. It thus represents an alternative to teacher-centred classes in practice phases.

9.8

References

Barrows, Howard S./Tamblyn, Robyn M. 1980. Problem-Based Learning: An Approach to Medical Education. New York: Springer. Bartlett, Robin L. 1996. Discovering diversity in introductory economics. In: The Journal of Economic Perspectives 10 (2), 141–153. Becker, William E./Watts, Michael. 1995. Teaching tools: Teaching methods in undergraduate conomics. In: Economic Inquiry 33 (October), 692–700. Becker, William E./Watts, Michael. 1996. Chalk and talk: A national survey on teaching undergraduate economics. In: The American Economic Review 86 (2), 448–453. Braun, Edith 2008. Das Berliner Evaluationsinstrument für selbsteingeschätzte studentische Kompetenzen (BeVaKomp). Göttingen: V&R Unipress. Clark, Ruth C./Mayer, Richard E. 2011. E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning. San Francisco: Pfeiffer. Lage, Maureen J./Platt, Glenn J./Treglia, Michael. 2000. Inverting the classroom: A gateway to creating an inclusive learning environment. In: The Journal of Economic Education 31 (1), 30–43.

10 Designing In-Class Activities in the Inverted Classroom Model Christian Spannagel & Janna Spannagel1 The Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) has been applied to many contexts, especially to classrooms in schools and lectures in universities (Bergmann/Sams, 2012; Lage/Platt/Treglia, 2000; Handke/Sperl, 2012; Möller, 2013; Bernsen, 2013). One of the main goals here is to free the classroom from talks and presentations given by the teacher in order to increase the time for discussion, interaction, collaborative learning activities, and individual feedback.

10.1

The ICM is not ‘video learning’

The ICM has often been mixed-up with online learning or ‘video learning’. However, having videos for preparation is only the first part of the weekly process. In fact, the main focus lies on the time in the classroom, which has been freed from teacher-centred situations. This is also highlighted by the fact that watching videos at home is usually called preparation. This means that students should be prepared for the ‘more important’ phase afterwards: the classroom phase with learning activities which foster deeper understanding of concepts and processes demonstrated in the videos. There are many methods which help to design rich in-class activities in groups of twenty, thirty, or more students. Students can work on problems individually or with partners, while the teacher walks around, answers questions, and gives feedback. Group discussions as well as sophisticated methods like the Jigsaw method or learning stations can be used to involve the whole class into collaborative learning activities. Projects can be carried out to let students perform higher-level activities like analyzing, planning, creating, and reflecting. _________________ 1

We would like to thank the research group Playgroup Heidelberg (http://www.playgrouphd.de) for supporting us with ideas and concepts. Many thanks to Kristina Lucius and Michael Gieding for their critical comments on lecture games. We would also like to thank all the participants of the EduCamp 2013 in Hamburg, Germany, who contributed many ideas on lecture games in a very fruitful brainstorming session.

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It is much more difficult to design productive in-class activities for lectures with a large audience in university courses. Many professors, lecturers, and teachers at university level are of the opinion that talks and presentations are the only way to work with groups of a hundred or more students, and that it is impossible to realize student-centred methods with large groups. In fact, this is not true. This article presents some methods which can be used in large lectures in combination with the Inverted Classroom Model. Section 2 describes the Think – Pair – Share method which helps to increase the students’ participation in lectures. In section 3, the Active Auditorium is presented where the whole group of students works together in order to solve, for example, mathematical problems or to share and discuss arguments with regard to a specific topic. In section 4, three lecture games are described which can be realized even with a large group of students. Section 5 explains the whole planning process of a lecture involving two or more methods. The article ends with a conclusion and the discussion of ideas for the future and their implementation. The descriptions of the methods are enriched with examples from mathematics lectures at the University of Education in Heidelberg, Germany. The ICM has been used there for several semesters, and all methods described in the article have been tested, evaluated, and improved in this context.

10.2

Method 1: Think – Pair – Share

The Think – Pair – Share (TPS) method was first introduced by Lyman (1981). TPS targets the low involvement of the students when the teacher asks a question. Teachers tend to expect answers immediately after the question, ignoring that everyone needs time to think. This implicates that often only very good, brave, and/or self-confident students are willing to respond in front of large audiences. Other students have not arrived at a solution yet or they are not sure whether their answer is correct. They would rather remain silent than present a wrong and perhaps ‘stupid’ answer to a large group of fellow students. TPS takes into account that students are more eager to share their thoughts with a larger audience if they have had time to think about the question and had the chance to talk to their neighbours about their ideas first. TPS is structured into three stages: Think: Firstly, students are invited to think about a problem or a question on their own. They can also be prompted to take notes or to scribble or draw a graphical representation of their thoughts. Pair: Secondly, students share their results with their neighbours. They identify similarities and differences, try to create a common answer, or formulate questions neither of them is able to answer. Share: Thirdly, answers are shared with the whole audience. Students contribute the results they discussed before in a smaller circle, now more confident regarding the correctness or relevance of their ideas. Originally, Lyman wrote about the Listen – Think – Pair – Share method which had an initial fourth phase where students first have to listen to the question. Nowadays, the

10.3 Method 2: The Active Auditorium

115

method is mostly referred to as Think – Pair – Share, based on the presupposition that the question already has been given and listened to. Teachers often complain that there is not enough time in lectures for individual work and discussions. But in the ICM, in-class time for exactly these activities has been increased by moving the teachers’ presentations to the preparation phase at home. Now there is a lot of in-class time, which can be given to the students for the Think, Pair, and Share stages of the TPS method. There is no limit with regard to the number of students participating in the TPS. This method helps to enrich interactions in large and very large audiences with more studentcentred elements. Nevertheless, it is still often ‘teacher-driven’ because discussions are moderated by the teacher. Thus, students do not discuss amongst themselves, but rather with the teacher in bilateral talks. The method described in the next section tries to overcome this problem.

10.3

Method 2: The Active Auditorium

The Active Auditorium is a method which fosters classroom discussions among students. Two or three students moderate the session and record results, while the other students contribute thoughts and discuss ideas. For the majority of the lesson, the teacher does not participate in the classroom discussion but stays at the back of the room supervising the students’ activities and intervening only when the group is stuck. The Active Auditorium is visualized in Figure 10.1. It has been designed in the context of the meta-method learning by teaching developed by Jean-Pol Martin (cf. Berger/Grzega/Spannagel, 2011).

Figure 10.1: The Active Auditorium.

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The typical course of the method is the following: Two students come to the front in order to lead the discussion or the solution process of a mathematical problem, for example. They are instructed not to solve the problem and not to comment on the contributions of the other students who are sitting in the rows of the lecture hall. One of the two students is the discussion chair. His or her task is to select students who raise their hands in order to participate in the discussion. Furthermore, he or she has to keep the discussion lively by inviting students to participate and by asking questions such as “Who has something to contribute?” or “Who has an idea on how we can proceed?” The second student is the minute taker. He or she is instructed not to evaluate the contributions and has to write down exactly what has been said by those involved in the discussion. It is important to mention that the two students at the front do not have to know any answers or be able to solve the problem by themselves. The opposite is the case: These two students do not have to know anything about the content. They only have to chair and take notes. Thinking, problem solving, and discussing is the job of the other students in the auditorium. The students in the auditorium are instructed to share all their ideas with the audience, acting like ‘neurons’ in a network [INT1]. They should not hold back their comments just because they are not sure about their correctness. Mistakes, errors, and dead ends are to be identified and corrected by someone in the audience. Correct and/or useful knowledge will likely emerge in the system of ‘neurons’ as they share their information with each other. The teacher only intervenes if the group is stuck. It is very important neither to intervene too early (because this will stop the discussion among the students) nor too late (because this will lead to a large uncertainty among the group). It is also recommendable not to stand in front or at the side of the room because students will always seek the teacher’s confirmation. The teacher’s position is in the last row of the room, sitting and observing the classroom discussion. Another function of the teacher is to coach the two students at the front, giving them hints on what they could ask or write if they have no idea. In addition, the teacher is responsible for the class to be completely silent while a student is sharing his or her idea or solution with the group. The whole situation is very demanding for the teacher as it is not predictable what will happen. He or she really has to be an expert in the field, estimating the value of students’ solutions very fast, but trying to be a ‘silent observer’ until it really becomes necessary to intervene. The Active Auditorium can be implemented in various ways. For example, the teacher dictates a problem from the back, the student at the board writes it down, and the student chair immediately asks for contributions. This can be modified in a way that the Active Auditorium is used in the Share phase of the Think – Pair – Share method. In this scenario, students first consider the problem, discuss it with the neighbours, and then present the results to the active auditorium. The teacher has to decide in advance which way is the better one. It may depend on the complexity of the problem. For example, easy problems can be solved by the audience immediately, while complex problems must be analyzed individually first. A third variation can be used in discussions with pros and cons. The group is divided into two halves: The right half is the pro group; the left half is the contra group. First, the

10.4 Method 3: Lecture games

117

students have to collect arguments for their position together with their neighbours. Afterwards, three students will come to the front of the room: One student writes down all pro-arguments, one writes down all contra-arguments, and one leads the discussion. We have tested this method with a maximum of 200 students and it may work with 300, but it can be assumed that there is a limit regarding the number of students.

10.4

Method 3: Lecture games

A way of having more fun while learning in lectures is playing a game with the whole audience. It is obvious that in the context of lectures, a game should not be played only for fun. Instead, it should help to deepen the understanding of the actual learning contents. A second demand is that the game should be able to be played with a large group of people. Not every game fulfils this requirement. There are several lecture games which can be played with a hundred students or more. Some of them are described in the following. A very simple example of a lecture game is Divide and Fight. The whole group is divided into two subgroups (the left and the right part of the room). Tasks are presented – for example with a projector or on the board. The student who first arrives at the solution calls it out loudly and his or her group gets the point. The group with the most points wins. If the audience is large, it can be split into more than two groups. Another game is called Row Rotation. The students have to divide themselves equally amongst the rows of the lecture hall (five to ten students per row). Each row plays together as a team. The students in each team all have to sit in the seats on the right-hand side of their row. Then the teacher gives a problem (for example, a mental calculation task). The student sitting in the aisle seat on the right side of each row must shout the correct answer (he or she is called the ‘shouter’). However, the other students in the row should also try to solve the problem. If a team member other than the shouter knows the answer first, the row has to pass the result to their shouter by whispering it from neighbour to neighbour (like Chinese whispers). If a shouter has called the correct result, he or she has to stand up and walk to the left end of his or her row. Now the whole group moves one seat to the right end (this is why the game is called Row Rotation) and the whole procedure starts again. The first group which has rotated completely is the winner. Ring the Bell is played in groups of four to five students. Each group is then given the same set of tasks. The students must solve all of the tasks (and can decide to solve them using the ‘divide and conquer’ method, each student solving only some of the tasks). If a group is finished, one of the group members runs to a bell, which is placed on a table in front of the room and rings it (see Figure 10.2). All other groups have to stop solving immediately. Then the results are compared (the student who stopped the round by ringing the bell has to read out the results) and rated – one point for each correct task, minus one point for each incorrect task, and zero points for each unfinished task. If there is a maximum of fifteen

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groups, the teacher writes down the points of each group on the board. 2 Afterwards, the next set of tasks is distributed, and so on. If the room is very large, two bells should be used – one should be placed in the front, the other one in the back of the room. The front rows have to run to the bell in the back and vice versa.

Figure 10.2: Bell used in Ring the Bell.

The lecture games presented here are all games which are based on quickness and competition. Thus, it is recommendable to use them in a late phase of the learning process. The games then offer an opportunity for the students to test whether they perform well and fast in the given tasks.

10.5

Putting it all together

We presented three methods which can be used with larger audiences in the context of the ICM. There are, of course, more methods, and the ones presented serve only as examples. There is a wide variety of methods, and lecturers can select the ones which fit the most for the concepts and processes they are teaching. All presented methods, especially the Active Auditorium and the lecture games, last twenty to thirty minutes. A typical lecture at German universities lasts ninety minutes. Consequently, it is necessary to divide a session into several stages if different methods are going to be applied. This leads to a variation of techniques in one session which helps to maintain students’ attention and motivation. It is recommended that teachers create a session plan in which they structure the session and document the planned progress. They can write down how long a phase lasts, what _________________ 2

For this purpose, groups should invent funny group names which are also written on the board in order to increase motivation.

10.6 Conclusion and outlook

119

activities should be performed by the teacher and by the students, and which methods and media are going to be used. A typical simple session plan is shown in Table 10.1. During the first stage, students ask questions that have arisen while watching the videos in the preparation phase. The teacher and the students try to answer the questions collaboratively. Then a Think – Pair – Share stage with an Active Auditorium in the Share phase is performed. Students try to solve two transfer problems and discuss their solutions in the Active Auditorium. This is the longest phase in the example because experience has shown that phases of this type need a lot of time. In the third stage, the teacher gives a short presentation on aspects which are not contained in the videos. At the end, a short lecture game is played to give students the opportunity to test their performance on standard problems. Table 10.1: Typical (simple) lesson plan. Time 15 min 35 min 20 min 20 min

Activities Discussion of questions from videos students solving two transfer problems teacher’s presentation students solving standard problems

Methods and Media discussion; board TPS with Active Auditorium; board projector; slides lecture game Ring the Bell

Of course, session plans can vary in many aspects, and it often happens that the plan must be changed during a session due to unpredictable events. Teachers must react flexibly even when having prepared a session plan.

10.6

Conclusion and outlook

The ICM offers teachers the freedom to design in-class activities with a large variety of methods that can also enhance learning in lectures and classes with large audiences. Methods such as Think – Pair – Share, the Active Auditorium, and lecture games help to keep the students’ attention and motivation high. In addition, classes become more studentcentred and the teacher gets an insight into the thinking processes of the students. Designing and managing in-class activities with large groups can be much more fun for the teacher if he or she accepts openness and uncertainty in the classes. Sometimes it happens that questions arise in the Active Auditorium which the teacher cannot answer. These situations are excellent for demonstrating that even teachers do not know everything in their field, and that they too are still learners. These are rich opportunities for teachers to be role models on how to learn, work, and think scientifically. In the future, more lecture games will be put into practice, tested, and improved. We have many ideas for lecture games which have not yet been implemented. Experience has shown that games not only need to be invented, but also tested and optimized before they can be published. Thus, more games will be provided in the near future.

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10.7

10 Designing In-Class Activities in the Inverted Classroom Model

References

Berger, Lutz/Grzega, Joachim/Spannagel, Christian (eds.). 2011. Lernen durch Lehren im Fokus. Berichte von LdL-Einsteigern und LdL-Experten. Berlin: epubli. Bernsen, Daniel. 2013. Inverting the history classroom – a first-hand report. In this volume, 147–154. Bergmann, Jonathan/Sams, Aaron. 2012. Flip Your Classroom. Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Eugene, Oregon: ISTE. Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). 2012. Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. Lage, Maureen J./Platt, Glenn J./Treglia, Michael. 2000. Inverting the classroom: A gateway to creating an inclusive learning environment. In: The Journal of Economic Education 31 (1), 30–43. Lyman, Frank. 1981. The responsive classroom discussion: The inclusion of all students. In: Anderson, Audrey S. (ed.). Mainstreaming Digest. College Park, MD: University of Maryland, College of Education. Möller, Clemens. 2013. Activating students by inverting and shuffling the classroom – experiences from employing ICM and I²CM. In this volume, 23–33. [INT1] Martin, Jean-Pol. 2009. The neuron metaphor: How neurons should behave. http://de.wikiversity.org/wiki/Benutzer:Cspannagel/forschungsprofil/iatelmotivati on/classasbrain (translated by M. Akbari and C. Spannagel); last accessed on 21/05/2013.

11 Clicker-Happy: Audience Response Systems as an Interface between Pre-Class Preparation and In-Class Session Leonie Wiemeyer One of the goals of inverting the classroom is to generate more time for questions, exercises, and discussions to enhance student comprehension of the class content during the lesson, thus creating an active, interactive, and motivating learning environment. However, class time is often dominated by a small number of students, making it difficult for the teacher to respond to the needs of the less vocal learners. Furthermore, in most Inverted Classroom settings it is difficult to assess whether students have understood and retained the materials they were assigned to work on at home, or whether they even worked on them at all. Audience response systems allow the teacher to get immediate feedback from the learners about their learning progress, their remaining problems, and their retention of the assigned readings. They also offer a feasible way to implement formative assessment in the Inverted Classroom and can serve as a link between pre-class preparation and in-class teaching.

11.1

What is an audience response system?

An audience response system (ARS) is a technology that allows students to answer questions, vote, or give feedback on the spot. The results are then immediately calculated and displayed by the affiliated software. Audience response systems are most well known from TV quiz shows such as ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’. They have been available for some twenty years and have been used in classrooms for at least ten (cf. Herreid, 2006: 44; Brewer, 2004). The questions are usually presented to the participants in a multiplechoice format; other formats such as text entry, numeric entry, or graded-scale responses are also possible in some systems (cf. Barber/Njus, 2007: 2). Depending on the system, the

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answers are entered either into wireless hand-held devices, also called ‘clickers’, or into a web-based application which can be accessed from any device with access to the internet, such as a smartphone or a tablet computer. There are different types of audience response systems available. 1 The ‘traditional’ type of audience response system consists of a set of ‘clickers’, i.e. remote controls into which the answers are entered, a receiver which connects to a computer, and software which calculates and graphically represents the results as soon as they have been transmitted. Various different clicker designs are available: the keypad may have only four keys (for example A-B-C-D or numbers 1 to 4), a full numeric and alphabetic keyboard layout similar to those of mobile phones, or even a QWERTY layout 2 comparable to some smartphones. Most clickers bear additional keys for sending, turning the device on and off, or even for interaction with the teacher or other learners. They usually have a small LCD screen on which the learner’s input is displayed or an LED light which confirms the submission of a reply, a feature referred to as “two-way communication” (Barber/Njus, 2007: 2). The answers are transmitted from the clickers by either infrared or radio frequency signal to a receiver which is connected to the classroom computer, typically via USB. It interacts with software which immediately calculates the results and then displays them so that they can be projected. A choice of graphical representations is usually available, and some systems offer an easy integration into software such as PowerPoint which allows the teacher to present the questions as part of his or her presentation (cf. Barber/Njus, 2007: 3ff.; Herreid, 2006: 44). More recently, another type of audience response system has emerged, probably triggered by the surge in smartphone usage. These new web-based systems no longer depend on hardware but are hosted on websites or exist as an app. They can be accessed and installed on virtually any device with internet access. They are cloud-based, which means that once the user is logged in, questions can be saved and reused within the web application. Webbased audience response systems often offer additional functionalities, such as direct questions to the teacher and live attitude measurement in which students can indicate whether or not they can follow the lecture. MQlicker [INT1], ARSnova [INT2] and Socrative [INT3] are three examples of web-based ARSs. MQlicker offers a very sophisticated question management system and allows the user to start several parallel sessions from the same set of questions. These can easily be stored and reused. A number of question formats and graphical representations for the results are available. Questions can also be exported into PowerPoint. Unfortunately, it is not possible to associate answers with individual users or to display the correct answer once the user has entered a response. ARSnova, a project of the University of Applied Sciences _________________ 1

For a detailed overview of some of the audience response systems available, their technical specifications and strengths and weaknesses, see Barber/Njus, 2007.

2

A QWERTY layout is the most common keyboard layout found on computer keyboards. The denomination refers to the order of the first six letters in the top left corner. In Germany, it is usually replaced by a QWERTZ layout.

11.2 Application of ARSs in teaching

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Gießen-Friedberg in Germany, has a very intuitive and smartphone-friendly user interface. It features login via an existing Google account. Apart from the usual array of question formats, there is an option for live mood measurement and for direct questions to the lecturer. This makes it especially suitable for use in large lecture classes. Socrative offers a nested layout with the typical question formats and functions. Unlike the other two webbased response systems, it has a function to limit the answering time given for a quiz and the answers can be associated with individual students. This means that it can be used for graded assessment, since each respondent can be identified. It also has an instant question function for multiple-choice, true-or-false and open-ended questions. With this feature, an orally posed question can be answered via the ARS. This affords the teacher more flexibility in class since questions do not have to be prepared beforehand. Web-based ARSs offers some important advantages over the wireless hardware: Most of these applications are free of charge so that their use in the classroom is not associated with high costs, in contrast to a hardware-based ARS. This means that with a steady wireless connection in the auditorium, the students can answer the ARS questions via their laptop, smartphone, or tablet without requiring any additional equipment. If not every student owns such a device, the questions may be answered in groups. Web-based ARSs are available from anywhere as long as the required session key or room number is known. Due to this attribute, the questions can be answered not only from within the classroom but also from home or by a remote audience, for example the participants of a MOOC or the audience at a conference, which offers additional pedagogic possibilities.

11.2

Application of ARSs in teaching

Audience response systems are most commonly integrated into teaching in large enrolment university-level lectures. These classes usually take place in large auditoriums whose fixed seating arrangement restricts group exercises and discussions as well as student-centred approaches such as problem-based learning (cf. Herreid, 2006: 43f.). In order to break up the restrictive setting imposed by the auditoriums, some lecturers are introducing new ways of organising the traditionally teacher-centred lectures by adopting ‘large-group exercises’ such as Peer Instruction, Think – Pair – Share, or the Active Auditorium (cf. Mazur, 1997; Spannagel, 2012; Spannagel/Spannagel, 2013). Herreid points out the following: Some of these approaches show significant changes in student attitudes and learning gains. The critical feature in these positive experiences is that the instructors are using feedback systems that transform the classroom into an interactive experience. (2006: 44) Audience response systems are a powerful tool to enhance learning through interactive feedback. They are a relatively new technology that can serve to motivate the learners by actively engaging them with the content of the lecture. They can be used to test understanding and to address misconceptions, while at the same time providing teachers with an immediate insight into the level of proficiency of their learners. Other applications include pre-assessment and short quizzes as well as teacher feedback or class evaluations. It

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is also possible to employ audience response systems in order to increase class attendance by having students log in at the beginning of the class. Audience response systems are additionally used for formative assessment, in conjunction with Peer Instruction or, for example, for psychological experiments in real-time. For each of these applications, the clickers can be used by individuals or by groups (Herreid, 2006: 44f.). Different institutions have different solutions for the equipment: In some classes, the students have to buy the clickers as part of the class requirements; in others, the university lends the devices to the students in return for a registration and/or a deposit. Usually, the clicker questions are integrated into the lectures in a cycle which begins with the presentation of lecture or case study material. After such a lecture, one or more questions are posed via the ARS and answered by the students. This is often preceded or followed by small group or class discussions. Once the responses have been submitted and the discussion has ceased, the correct answers are clarified and explained. Further lecture may ensue if the lecturer deems this to be necessary. The cycle is then repeated (Beatty, 2004: 3f.). A vital component in any audience response system-based teaching approach is the questions used for the quizzes. These should be smoothly integrated into the lecture content so as to support and enhance student understanding. Therefore, close attention has to be paid to making the questions relevant to the topic and to formulating them suitably (cf. Beatty et al., 2007). The key to good multiple-choice questions are the possible answers which should make it impossible to answer the question simply by using common sense. Instead, they should be formulated in such a way that the question can only be answered by having fully understood and correctly applying the concepts studied beforehand. 3 As mentioned above, one important application is the use of an ARS in conjunction with Peer Instruction. Peer Instruction (PI), which was developed by Eric Mazur at Harvard, is a student-centred teaching method whose effectiveness has been well documented (cf. Mazur, 1997; Fagen/Crouch/Mazur, 2002). “PI is a pedagogical approach that emphasizes basic concepts, has students commit to a conception, provides a setting for peer discussion, and has instructors explicitly address misconceptions.” (Lasry, 2008: 243) In Peer Instruction, students usually prepare content at home prior to the lesson. In class, questions on the readings – or on a short preceding lecture – are posed by the lecturer and answered by the students individually. The questions are subsequently discussed in groups. During this stage, students discuss and explain the problem to improve their peers’ understanding or to dismantle misconceptions. Afterwards, each student individually answers the question again. Finally, the lecturer clears up remaining issues and decides whether more lecturing on the topic is needed (cf. Mazur, 1997). Originally, the questions were answered by a show of hands and later by holding up flashcards. Due to the difficulties associated with counting hands or flashcards in large auditoriums, these are nowadays usually replaced by audience response systems (Lasry, 2008: 242). _________________ 3

Beatty et al. (2007) provide detailed instructions and tips on how to formulate good clicker questions.

11.3 Benefits and disadvantages of audience response systems

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With regard to their application in teaching, web-based audience response systems offer an important advantage over hardware-based systems: Questions can be answered from any device with an internet connection, which means that they can also be part of homework or class preparation and can be used to give students an opportunity to test their knowledge before or after class, not only during the lecture. Whereas audience response systems can be found more and more in large lecture classrooms, especially at American universities, accounts of the use of ARSs in high school settings are still rare. One notable example of the use of classroom response systems, as they are usually referred to in this context, in a high school classroom is the trial undertaken by Schiller and Hopf (2007) in which they implemented an ARS in two physics classes at a German middle school. Their goal was to use the audience response system to improve student activity and participation in an otherwise quite teacher-centred setting. The study found that the implementation of the ARS improved student attentiveness and activity. The ARS also received favourable feedback from the learners who felt they were more active and enjoyed working with the clickers. Furthermore, the immediate feedback provided to the the learners regarding their current level of proficiency and the immediate assessment of previous knowledge, class preparation, and learning progress for the teacher were described as advantageous (Schiller/Hopf, 2007: 3). The study shows that there are applications for audience response systems in the high school classroom as well. Particularly the immediacy of the display of results allows for a more thorough analysis of the needs of the group or the individual learner and consequently for flexible adjustment of lesson plans and exercises. Nevertheless, most high school classes – at least in Germany – are already less teachercentred, more interactive and usually characterised by more fluid transitions between different teaching methods and media than university classes. Beyond that, much more time is necessarily devoted to practising and applying what has been learnt. Bearing this in mind, the introduction of an audience response system might be a step backwards, especially in the arts. A new teaching concept involving an ARS should thus be well thought through and applied only for feedback or to enhance the understanding of material which has to be presented by the teacher.

11.3

Benefits and disadvantages of audience response systems

Since audience response systems have been in use across several academic disciplines, especially in natural science classes, there are a substantial number of studies on their use and their benefits, most of which confirm a beneficial effect of ARSs on student outcomes. According to Beatty (2004), one of the most important benefits is that through using an ARS, the learners become active participants in their learning process by providing their teacher with information about their progress. The teacher can then flexibly adjust the curriculum to meet the learners’ immediate needs. Their own misunderstandings also become immediately apparent to the learners. Once they are conscious of their problems, students usually become more committed to improving their results. By regularly responding to questions about the current topic, students develop a more profound and

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integrated understanding. This is especially the case if the questions challenge them to apply their knowledge to new scenarios rather than merely asking them to recall the concepts (Beatty, 2004: 5). A survey of the results of formal assessment studies (Herreid, 2006: 45) shows that students and teachers use ARSs enthusiastically and believe that they enhance learning. Though certainly in part due to a novelty effect, students nevertheless “report they enjoy using them and believe they help them understand the material and prepare for exams” (Herreid, 2006: 45). Caldwell observes that “[s]tudents in large classes are often hesitant or unwilling to speak up because of fear of public mistakes […] or even uncertainty of acceptable behaviour.” (2007: 9) This problem is addressed by audience response systems because students are able to respond to the questions anonymously without embarrassing themselves, even if they are unsure or only guessing. Pairing an ARS-based approach with group discussions appears to create an atmosphere in which students find it easier to ask for explanations in front of the class (Beatty, 2004: 5). Even shy students are actively involved, and class discussion is no longer dominated by a minority. Moreover, once students have responded to a question, they are “emotionally invested in the problem and pay far more attention to subsequent discussion and resolution.” (Beatty, 2004: 5) Attendance also improves notably when clickers are used, usually because points are awarded for responding (Caldwell, 2007: 13). Aside from improving their understanding, students can enhance their discussion and reasoning skills. The interactivity of ARS-supported lectures also makes students more likely to respond to their peers’ suggestions or questions (Caldwell, 2007: 11). Furthermore, as shown in several studies, the use of an audience response system improves student comprehension and learning outcomes 4 and more students tend to complete and pass the respective classes (Caldwell, 2007: 13). Despite the wide range of benefits reported in the literature, there are also downsides to the use of response systems. One of the major disadvantages of a hardware-based option is that the technology can cause problems and that missing devices or low batteries have to be accounted for in clicker-supported classes. Storage and maintenance must also be provided for (cf. Herreid, 2006: 45). A further problem is caused by the abundance of systems available, especially if more than one system is used within one institution, as this can mean that students need to purchase different clickers for different classes. Beyond that, if an ARS is to be smoothly integrated into large lectures, the entire structure of the lecture has to be rearranged to incorporate the clickers. The readings, clicker questions, lecture content, and lecture time all have to be adjusted to a new teaching concept. This also entails a changed teacher role, as teachers have to change the way they present the content and integrate the questions. They have to make time to create meaningful and challenging questions that are customized to the lecture content and have the potential to reveal misconceptions and misunderstandings on the part of the learners.

_________________ 4

Caldwell (2007: 13) notes that the improved exam scores cannot be attributed solely to the use of ARS as the style of teaching in ARS-supported lectures varies and often includes Peer Instruction.

11.4 Audience response systems in the Inverted Classroom

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It is sometimes criticized that audience response systems do not offer any advantages over simple flash cards or a show of hands for feedback and that they are too expensive 5 in comparison. This claim is not unjustified: A study by Lasry (2008) on different voting techniques showed that flash cards indeed produced the same conceptual learning and exam performance results as the ARS in the comparison group. This implies that Peer Instruction is effective regardless of the method used for voting. However, there is an additional value: Audience response systems immensely reduce the time needed to assess and project precise results and these results can be archived so that questions can be reused and reformulated if necessary (Lasry, 2008: 243). The use of technology in general usually also produces a motivational effect, and students are less likely to change their vote to accord with those of their peers when using clickers. This is especially the case if the voting is anonymous; making the data collected in the classroom more accurate (Herreid, 2006: 44). Finally, webbased audience response applications eliminate the cost usually associated with the implementation of a hardware-based ARS, as long as every learner has access to a webenabled device.

11.4

Audience response systems in the Inverted Classroom

Audience response systems are most frequently used to quiz students on assigned readings at the beginning of the class. As preparing materials at home is an integral part of the Inverted Classroom Model (ICM), audience response systems can be used to blend the preclass preparation into the in-class content, most effectively in combination with Peer Instruction. In the typical Inverted Classroom setting, “lectures take place outside of class and class time is devoted to group and individual problem solving, discussion, and experiments.” (Lage/Platt, 2000: 11) This allows students to work on the class content whenever and wherever they choose, at their own speed and, in an ideal scenario, by choosing their own materials and methods. By offering video, audio, designated websites, and cooperative learning environments, the teacher can design the materials in such a way as to address different learner types and different perceptive preferences. Furthermore, learners can interact with one another using social networks should problems or misunderstandings arise. However, an important aspect which is often overlooked in the academic discourse is the interface between the pre-class preparation and the in-class session. Specifically, it is usually not discussed how these two phases of the Inverted Classroom can be smoothly interlinked and how to determine whether students have understood the concepts previously studied and are able to apply them. Audience response systems assume this function. _________________ 5

For example, the SMART Response Systems, which are compatible with the interactive SMARTboard, cost between 2000 and 2850 Euro for a receiver and 32 clickers, depending on the functionality of the clickers chosen.

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Through questions regarding the contents studied prior to class, they assess whether the students have reached the learning objectives, provide feedback to the teacher about their students’ level of achievement and can link their homework to the in-class content. Audience response systems can enhance learning in the Inverted Classroom as a way to evaluate student comprehension and, most importantly, to assess the learning outcomes achieved through pre-class preparation.

11.4.1 Practising and deepening understanding through an ARS In an Inverted Classroom approach, audience response systems can be used for exercises that aim at evaluating and increasing the students’ proficiency in a given field of study as well as for questions that challenge students to apply what they have learnt to new problems and contexts. For the use of an ARS in the Inverted Classroom, two models of implementation are proposed.

11.4.1.1 Basic model of ARS integration into the ICM In a typical lecture supported by an audience response system, short lectures alternate with questions to be answered by the students. This cycle is the basis of the first way in which an ARS can be integrated into flipped learning: the basic ARS integration into the Inverted Classroom.

Figure 11.1: A basic model for the integration of an audience response system into the Inverted Classroom.

11.4 Audience response systems in the Inverted Classroom

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In the basic model shown in Figure 11.1, there are four stages: In Stage 1, as in any Inverted Classroom setting, the students complete assignments. This takes place outside of the classroom and constitutes the first phase of the ICM. The assignments may be, for example, videos, readings, or lessons on an e-learning platform. In class, the lesson begins with Stage 2 in which questions are presented via the ARS. These may focus on the content prepared at home and test the students’ grasp of the presented concepts, or whether the assignments were done at all. Alternatively, they may connect the new concepts to others that have been previously studied or serve to expand understanding by transferring knowledge onto new problems. The questions are answered in Stage 3 in which students respond to the questions individually (3a); or discuss the questions in small groups and then respond jointly or individually (3b). The choice between 3a) and 3b) can be based upon the complexity of the materials prepared and on the preferences of the learners. Finally, in Stage 4, responses are evaluated and displayed using the ARS software. In the subsequent discussion, the lecturer asks individual students to reveal their answer and explain their reasoning (cf. Beatty, 2004: 4). This approach serves to link the homework assignments to the exercises and experiments of the in-class session in a way that provides the teacher with an insight into the needs of his or her students. This immediately reveals how well the students are prepared and where they need more help or additional information. At the same time, the students can test themselves by applying the learnt concepts to new problems anonymously without fear of being exposed. By allowing the students to answer the questions in groups, misunderstandings or a lack of preparation can be compensated and social skills can be trained at the same time.

11.4.1.2 Advanced model of ARS integration into the ICM In the seven-stage advanced model of ARS integration shown in Figure 11.2, the use of the ARS is combined with Peer Instruction. It is based on Beatty’s Question Cycle (2004: 4). In this approach, learners may help one another in understanding the current content of the class and in resolving misunderstandings. As in the basic model of ARS integration, students prepare their materials at home (Stage 1), questions are presented that focus on the studied concepts (Stage 2), these questions are answered individually (Stage 3), and the results are projected (Stage 4). Unlike in the basic model, the results are not discussed in class, and, importantly, the correct solution is not revealed. Instead, the students split up into groups, start a peer discussion on the respective question and try to find the solution together (Stage 5). This peer discussion may be moderated by the lecturer who can steer the group discussions into the right direction whenever necessary. Those students who have already acquired a more profound understanding of the concepts may address the misconceptions of their peers so that everyone eventually arrives at the correct conclusions. Ideally, the multiple-choice options should be formulated in such a way that the correct solution cannot simply be deduced with common sense, and should elicit responses that are evenly distributed between the given options so as to provide sufficient ground for discussion.

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Following the peer discussion, in Stage 6, the students again answer the original question individually. The lecturer then moderates a final discussion in which the groups may explain their reasoning or their approach to the problem. In an optional seventh stage, the teacher can give another short lecture or more explanations if the problem still has not been fully understood (cf. Beatty, 2004: 4). The cycle is then repeated.

Figure 11.2: In the advanced model of ARS integration into the Inverted Classroom, Peer Instruction is used to ensure a profound understanding of the concepts.

This cooperative approach is especially suitable for more advanced and complex problems which might pose problems to learners. Those who have already understood the underlying concepts are not idle but instead help their peers arrive at the same conclusion. The teacher’s role changes from lecturer and provider of content to moderator of the peer discussion who only intervenes in the case of a prevailing misunderstanding or a disagreement. This approach aims to include everyone in the learning process rather than accepting that some students will struggle more than others. At the same time, the teacher still gets immediate feedback on the problems students are facing with the question at hand before and after the discussion and can adjust the subsequent steps accordingly. Again, by employing audience response systems in the Inverted Classroom in a Peer Instructionbased approach, the pre-class preparation and in-class exercises are linked and the learning process is monitored and can be supported in a more effective way.

11.4 Audience response systems in the Inverted Classroom

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11.4.2 Using audience response systems to assess student learning One of the most challenging steps in flipping the classroom is motivating learners to prepare the materials at home, on their own, and bring their questions and problems into class to discuss and dissolve them. “The effective use of class time requires that students come to class prepared and motivated to learn.” (Liebler, 2003: 261) However, many learners are apprehensive in admitting their problems, especially when they feel they might be the only one struggling. Consequently, it takes intuition, empathy, and patience on the part of the teacher to assess their learners’ progress and tailor the in-class content to their learners’ needs. Audience response systems can provide a considerate and discreet way of evaluating student learning and preparation without exposing or embarrassing students. The quizzes usually have to be answered at the beginning of the class without prior discussion. “Giving the quiz at the beginning of the class places substantial responsibility on the students because they must solve the problems before questions about the problems are answered in class.” (Liebler, 2003: 262) Regularly quizzing the students has the additional effect of better content retention, which is usually named as one of the response systems’ benefits by the learners (cf. Caldwell, 2007: 14f.). The quizzes thus serve as an incentive to improve student preparation. In order to allow for missed quizzes, for example due to illness, a set number of quizzes can be determined as obligatory, for example the ten best quizzes out of fourteen. As using an audience response system alleviates the teacher of having to correct and score each quiz, administering short tests at the beginning of the class can be achieved in a matter of minutes with the additional benefit of instant graphical representation of the results. When used to survey whether the students have done their work, audience response systems “offer an efficient way to hold all students accountable for preclass preparation. Students who were regularly quizzed […] prepared more for class, but didn’t seem to mind as long as they earned something toward their final grades.” (Caldwell, 2007: 12) If the quiz counts towards the final grade, it can be expected that most students will prepare the assigned materials in order to avoid a negative impact on their grade, which leads to improved student preparation and consequently improved learning. Response systems can also be utilized for graded assessment as long as the software allows for it. Hardware-based ARSs are usually able to identify each clicker by a number or a name that has been entered. Some web-based ARSs, for example Socrative, offer nonanonymous quiz responses. Unfortunately, it appears that the benefits of using audience response systems for graded assessment have not yet been the subject of empirical studies. Based on a survey of current studies, Liebler (2003: 261f.) concludes that encouraging students to prepare for their classes positively impacts both student and faculty motivation and that frequent graded class tests improve student learning. Handke (2013a) suggests that formative assessment which allows students to test their understanding and monitor their own learning curve should be an integral part of the Inverted Classroom; a scenario he refers to as the Inverted Classroom Mastery Model (ICMM).

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In order to make the Inverted Classroom Model work, it is vital that the learners are not left alone with their problems in order to avoid a ‘knowledge gap’ between the content prepared at home and the exercises and discussions in class. Such a knowledge deficit caused by insufficient comprehension of the homework might make it difficult for the learner to stay up to speed with the others, thus hindering his or her progress. By assessing student learning outcomes at the beginning of each class meeting, the teacher receives an immediate feedback about the learners’ individual progress and needs and can adjust the curriculum accordingly, thus circumnavigating the problem of a possible knowledge deficit. The use of audience response systems should thus not only be seen as a way to monitor the learners’ work but to assess their needs and to adjust teaching plans, methods, and exercises for each lesson accordingly.

11.5

Conclusion and outlook

Audience response systems can be a powerful tool in the Inverted Classroom. They link pre-class preparation and in-class content through questions which provide teachers with instant feedback on their learners’ progress and enable them to tailor the subsequent exercises, short lectures and experiments to their learners’ needs. At the same time, these questions give students the opportunity to test their knowledge without being exposed. Audience response systems also give learners an incentive to study prior to class. Both hardware-based and web-based ARS can be smoothly integrated into the Inverted Classroom to give students the opportunity to test their knowledge anonymously and apply their knowledge to new scenarios with the additional advantage of regular feedback on their learning outcomes. In conjunction with Peer Instruction, students can discuss their problems and misconceptions with their peers to gain a more profound knowledge of the class content. Web-based audience response systems additionally afford another possibility of integration into the Inverted Classroom: Answering questions via an ARS can be part of the students’ pre-class preparation and can also be used for self-assessment. Graded assessment is another useful application of audience response systems and has been shown to increase student motivation. Despite being a useful tool to support student learning and assessment, audience response systems still have a number of disadvantages, such as the technical maintenance and high costs associated with them. These should not be overlooked when planning an ARSsupported lecture. As they are still a relatively new learning technology, many aspects of their use have not yet been the subject of empirical studies. An important opportunity for future research would be in the evaluation of the benefits of audience response systems for (graded) assessment. Further studies on audience response systems in high schools could provide more insight into the applicability and usefulness of this technology for younger and less experienced learners. In this context, a comparative survey of different disciplines could

11.6 References

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help to determine whether better learning outcomes are linked to the respective subject or whether the use of ARS can enhance learning in different disciplines. In conclusion, audience response systems have the potential to provide a useful and practical interface between the two phases of the Inverted Classroom. As a means of administering quizzes testing student preparation, comprehension, and retention of the prepared content, they can strike a new path towards Inverted Classroom learning that is learner-centred, feedback-based, and tailored to the students’ individual needs.

11.6

References

Barber, Maryfran/Njus, David. 2007. Clicker evolution: seeking intelligent design. In: CBE – Life Sciences Education 6/2007, 1–8. http://www.lifescied.org/content/6/1/1.full.pdf+html; last accessed on 12/07/2012. Beatty, Ian D. 2004. Transforming student learning with classroom communication systems. In: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) Research Bulletin 3/2004, 1– 13. http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0508/0508129.pdf; last accessed on 12/07/2012. Beatty, Ian D./Gerace, Wiliam J./Leonar, William J./Dufresne, Robert J. 2006. Designing effective questions for classroom response system teaching. In: American Journal of Physics 74 (1), 31–39. http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0508114.pdf; last accessed on 12/07/2012. Brewer, Carol A. 2004: Near real-time assessment of student learning and understanding in biology courses. In: BioScience 54 (11), 1034–1039. http://bioed.org/pubs/NearRealTimeAssessment.pdf; last accessed on 12/07/2012. Caldwell, Jane E. 2007: Clickers in the large classroom: current research and best-practice tips. In: CBE – Life Sciences Education 6/2007, 9–20. http://www.lifescied.org/content/6/1/9.full.pdf+html; last accessed on 11/07/2012. Fagen, Adam P./Crouch, Catherine H./Mazur, Eric. 2002. Peer Instruction: Results from a range of classrooms. In: The Physics Teacher 40, 206–209. http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~key/PHY1600/PER%20Papers/Mazur%20Peer% 20Instruction%20results.pdf; last accessed on 04/04/2013. Handke, Jürgen. 2013a. Beyond a Simple ICM. In this volume, 15–21. Herreid, Clyde Freeman. 2006. ’Clicker’ Cases: Introducing case study teaching into large classrooms. In: Journal of College Science Teaching 36 (2), 43ff. http://www.physics.emory.edu/Faculty/weeks/journal/Herreid_JCST1006.pdf; last accessed on 30/07/2012. Lasry, Nathaniel. 2008. Clickers or Flashcards: Is There Really a Difference? In: Phys. Teacher 46, 242–244. http://mazur.harvard.edu/publications.php?function=display&rowid=628; last accessed on 11/07/2012. Liebler, Robert J. 2003. The five-minute quiz. In: Journal of Accounting Education 21 (3), 261–265. Mazur, Eric. 1997. Peer Instruction: A User's Manual. Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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Schiller, Tobias/Hopf, Martin. 2007. Audience Response Systeme. In: Nordmeier, Volker/Oberländer, Arne (Hrsg.). Didaktik der Physik – Regensburg 2007. Berlin: Lehmanns Media. Spannagel, Christian. 2012. Selbstverantwortliches Lernen in der umgedrehten Mathematikvorlesung. In: Handke, Jürgen/Sperl, Alexander (eds.). Das Inverted Classroom Model. Begleitband zur ersten deutschen ICM-Konferenz. München: Oldenbourg. Spannagel, Christian/Spannagel, Janna. 2013. Designing in-class activities in the Inverted Classroom Model. In this volume, 113–120. [INT1] MQlicker. http://www.mqlicker.com; last accessed on 14/04/2013. [INT2] ARSnova. http://arsnova.thm.de; last accessed on 14/04/2013. [INT3] Socrative. http://www.socrative.com; last accessed on 14/04/2013.

IV Implementation of the ICM in High School Implementing the Inverted Classroom Model in high schools can be of great benefit for learners and teachers as it provides opportunities for individual learner support. The science classroom can be enhanced by this model, as explained by Brian E. Bennett. Having struggled with traditional modes of instruction, he implemented the ICM in his classes at an American high school in order to effectively engage his students and tailor his lessons to their needs. He describes how his teaching strategy evolved towards a mastery learning system employing project-based learning, among others. Having been inspired by the first ICM conference in 2012, Daniel Bernsen decided to flip his own history classes at a German high school and started producing videos which he published on YouTube. In his first-hand report, he outlines his path towards a studentcentred learning scenario. He describes the problems he encountered at first and how he overcame them. Now that his lessons are freed from lecture, positive effects on student outcomes and motivation can be observed. The ICM can also be a fruitful addition to the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. In his project for his second state examination, Dirk Weidmann flipped his grade seven English language class at a German high school. In a teaching unit on English grammar, he and his students identified problem areas which they then focused on in group work. The learners also developed their own teaching materials and researched the topics on the internet. Weidmann introduces the ten steps towards his new ICM variant and shares his own experience.

12 Flipped Learning in the Science Classroom Brian E. Bennett I became a teacher in 2009. As a first year teacher, I struggled to provide a consistently supportive learning environment for each of my students. I was able to meet the majority in the middle, but the students in the highest and lowest percentiles were always a struggle to continually engage and assist.

12.1

Problems in my classroom

In the spring of 2010, when I finally felt comfortable with my new schedule, some patterns began to emerge that began to gnaw at the pit of my stomach. I did not know my students nearly as well as I wanted to. I knew them, but I did not know them. I wanted to know what motivated and moved them. I just did not know how to find the time to do that. After all, I had standards to meet, and my precious class time didn’t allow for too much discussion outside of chemistry. Some students failed chemistry. That really bothered me. At the time, I naively chalked the failure up to the bell curve. Most of my students fell in the middle, some were higher, others were lower. As I continued to look at the curve, I felt like I had cheated some students. I saw that as a failure on my part to engage them effectively. I decided then and there that I don’t want my classes to fit bell curves. My students are individuals, not normalized data. My students were bored, and so was I. Teaching chemistry for the first time, I relied on lecture as a primary source of content delivery. After all, it was how I learned chemistry from 10th grade all the way through college. I could communicate well, but communication alone was not adequate when I wanted my students to build deep understanding of the material. I had training in developing different tools for teaching (projects, collaborative lessons, etc.), but I did not have the practical experience in actually deploying and managing those plans. I searched out more experienced colleagues in my building for assistance.

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Ultimately, I ended up joining Twitter and reaching out to educators across the world for support. Through my research, I met Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams, two of the United States’ leaders on flipped learning. I reached out to Jon in the spring of 2010. Jon quickly replied with, “Why don’t you make a video?” I had no context for this statement, so I quickly responded with more questions, looking for resources and other help he would be willing to offer. That summer, I travelled to Woodland Park, Colorado, and went through a week-long training with Bergmann and Sams on methods and tools that can be used to flip the classroom instruction cycle.

12.2

Conditioning students in a traditional classroom

B.F. Skinner (1938) is widely recognized as the father of Operant Conditioning, although, his work was based on another researcher, Edward Thorndike (1905). Skinner believed that behaviors which were reinforced would become stronger, and those which were not reinforced would die out in subjects. His experiments are well-documented, and the implications of this belief tie directly into the classroom. Traditional institutes of learning are built on teachers commanding the attention of his or her pupils. Year after year, students are conditioned to sit quietly, taking notes, while the teacher lectures (communicates) a given topic. The student is then expected to regurgitate the information on an assessment, with the positive reinforcement being a passing mark. We have systematically dehumanized the classroom. Learning, rather than being an active, collaborative process, has been inappropriately rebranded into a system of give-and-take. Students do not see the teacher as a person, and students are not even treated as elastic, dynamic learners for much of their schooling. The conditioning pattern begins at a young age, and is perpetrated throughout their school careers. By the time students are in high school, they have been conditioned to act in a certain way through rewards and punishments. In addition to Skinner, Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning can be tied in. Most educators are familiar with the cognitive portion of Bloom’s Taxonomy, which is typically shown as a pyramid, as in Figure 12.1.

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12.3 Introducing videos to the science classroom

Evaluation

Creating

Synthesis

Evaluating

Analysis

Analysing

Application

Applying

Comprehension

Understanding

Knowledge

Remembering

Figure 12.1: Cognitive portion of Bloom’s Taxonomy – old and new version.

Using Bloom’s Taxonomy through Skinner’s lens of reinforcing behaviors, reliance on lecture as the primary mode of instruction, we are perpetuating the dehumanization of education while only reaching the Knowledge and Comprehension levels of learning for our students. My goal was consistent engagement and discussion. If the teacher is the center of attention every day, those actions are difficult to manifest. A second goal was to maintain student’s access to information while at the same time reinforcing active learning behaviors in class. Mastery Learning gives teachers and students permission and resources required to accomplish the goal.

12.3

Introducing videos to the science classroom

A growing body of research is showing that the use of video in the learning cycle can increase student achievement (Green/Pinder-Grover/Mullinchick, 2012). There is no single use for screencasting, but rather, it can be used to meet specific needs faced in classrooms. Typical uses are overviews or summaries, providing instruction, procedures, elaborating on content or capturing attention (Green/Pinder-Grover/Millunchick, 2012). It has also been shown that students will use video content on their own, without coercion, if they see value in the resource [INT1]. When I began screencasting with my students, my videos were purely containers for lectures. I did not revise the volume of content, nor the sequence in which it was presented. This means that many of my videos were unabridged lectures captured in single videos, which could go as long as 20 minutes of non-stop instruction. One of the first differences immediately apparent was that students were struggling to focus on long video segments, particularly when content was brand-new. Students were working hard to assimilate new ideas and, as the material became more complicated, long videos were not effective in facilitating the process. In short, I was trying to present too many ideas at once.

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In response, I began to shorten my videos. I reviewed material and split the screencasts into one or two ideas per section. This shortened the length considerably, with the longest being between eight and ten minutes total. This also allowed students to hone in on specific misconceptions within the recorded content. Rather than sitting through a twenty-minute section, they could choose a specific lesson or topic to review in small pieces. After further experimentation and observation, I began revising my library again, settling on one idea per session and an average video length of between two and four minutes.

12.4

Unexpected initial results

An unexpected result of using screencasts as instructional tools was the way class time changed, which was a fortunate accident. Initially, I wanted to reserve class time solely for practice, exploration, and student work. However, at first I did not support this goal with short, digestible lessons. Students would come to class having not watched (or not understood) the entirety of the notes and needed time to process the information before moving along. Rather than pushing students along before they were ready to proceed, I would ask them to go through the video notes. I took their time to work on the extension material and used it to deliver video notes. In my mind, this was a natural consequence of not meeting my expectation for having all homework done on time. As I reflected on this practice, I realized that I had not changed anything about my teaching, and I still was not supporting learning. All I had done was remove myself from the teaching equation in class. I had to break the cycle. I began researching other changes I could implement in order to reach the level of engagement I wanted for my students. In essence, what needed to change was the focus on moving through content and a shift to students engaging with that content.

12.5

The Personalized System of Instruction

In 1968, Fred Keller, a professor at Columbia University, published an article called “Goodbye, teacher...” in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. In this article, Keller describes a system in which he builds a system of “training” rather than “education” (Keller 79). Keller was a psychologist, and he applied many ideas from Skinner and behaviorism theory as he developed the so-called Keller System in 1963, or as it was later known, the Personalized System of Instruction. The method itself is not enigmatic, as Keller (1968) describes it in one sentence to his students: “This is a course through which you may move, from start to finish, at your own pace.” (80) Keller also included this caveat, which started my path to mastery learning in chemistry:

12.6 Starting fresh – rethinking my approach to Flipped Instruction

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A good share of your reading for this course may be done in the classroom, at those times when no lectures, demonstrations, or other activities are taking place. Your classroom, that is, will sometimes be a study hall. (1968: 81) As I struggled to form my own philosophy of how class time should be used, I realized the time students spent listening to me was not important. The time students spent doing whatever they needed to do in order to be successful needed to be the focus. For some, that was the opportunity to move ahead at their own pace. For others, it was the opportunity to sit with me, one-on-one, to talk through material and answer questions. Rather than struggle along in a teacher-centred system that was not meeting my students’ needs, I developed my own mastery learning system. At this point, I want to state very clearly that 1) moving to a mastery model of learning is a continual process – you are never done; and 2) it is hard. As a teacher, my traditionally trained mind is telling me that the noise in my room was not okay. But, my new mind, my changed mind, is telling me that this was a good decision for my students. With mastery learning, I can eliminate the bellcurve model of education and level the playing field for all of my students.

12.6

Starting fresh – rethinking my approach to Flipped Instruction

Following Keller’s example, I began by revising my curriculum and writing out learning objectives for my units. I went through my materials, identified what specific ideas or topics I wanted my students to learn and then created activities and assignments to support those goals. The most difficult part of this process was making decisions about what skills I needed to teach and which ones students needed to develop naturally. I researched multiple ways to solve this problem. In my searching, I found multiple systems of support, mainy centred on inquiry learning and project-based learning. Both models focus on student questioning as the primary driver of content, rather than the reverse. Inquiry learning centers on perplexity and unexpected results to frame student learning, while project-based learning takes a large-scale problem and invites students to come up with solutions.

12.7

Inquiry learning – examples and applications

Much of my research led me to Ramsey Musallam, EdD. Ramsey is a chemistry teacher who has researched and written on inquiry in learning chemistry. He encourages teachers to only give instruction when it is absolutely necessary, rather than the traditional mode of front-loading content and then practicing. Students are then given freedom to explore, hypothesize, test, and evaluate their ideas. Essentially, they are moving through Bloom’s Taxonomy in reverse order (see Figure 12.2).

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Figure 12.2: Ramsey Musallam’s inquiry-based approach.

An example of an inquiry activity I included in my instruction came in our unit on chemical properties. A typical lab experiment is having students identify the chemical formula of a hydrate. I always did this lab as a follow up to instruction on moles, hydrates, and chemical nomenclature. In my mastery learning classroom, I reversed the pathway. Prior to any instruction, I asked my students one simple question: “How much water is trapped in this solid?” On the table, I had a supply of copper(II) sulfate pentahydrate. I had no other instructions, no other prompts, and no data format requirements. Based on their prior knowledge, my students were able to choose tools, collect samples, collecet and analyze data, and, ultimately, find the correct formula for the compound. In order to encourage real, rooted learning and interaction with our content, we have to relinquish some control.

12.8

Project-based learning – examples and applications

As mentioned before, project-based learning became a cornerstone in my mastery learning classroom. ‘Projects’ and ‘project-based learning’ are not synonymous for multiple reasons:

12.9 Changing grading practices in a mastery learning environment

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• Projects are short term and narrow in scope; project-based learning is long term and wide in scope. • Projects are rooted in one concept; project-based learning incorporates many areas of study. • Projects are typically used for assessment; project-based learning is used to support learning. Project-based learning was the hardest idea for me to refine because by nature, they are based on student interest and have no pre-defined outcome. Again, this is causing a collision between traditional methods of teaching and my new ideologies. An example of a project I had planned with a colleague centred around a local problem. A farmer who bred and sold rabbits had his stock dying for unknown reasons. He knew it was not an animal because the bodies were undamaged, but he could not find a reason for the deaths. Our students would be tasked with researching a potential cause of death. While this task can incorporate chemistry (water samples, soil samples, blood pathogens, etc) it is not isolated to chemistry. Students would be encouraged to research local history, geology, meterology, pathogens, genetics... the list went on. As the teacher, we had no preconceived notions of what our students’ outcome should be, therefore we could focus on learning without being burdened with the desire to find the right answer.

12.9

Changing grading practices in a mastery learning environment

Along with changing the scope and sequence of the material and the way students interact with it, I had to rethink and update my grading procedures. Rather than grade individual assignments, I tried to follow Keller’s model and grade the student’s understanding and use of the content. I would take assignments for completion only. In fact, to dissuade the temptation to cheat for completion points, I posted answer keys to practice work around the room. Thus, it served students no purpose to copy work blindly and turn it in. At the same time it provided instant feedback on the work students were tasked with. Students could turn in written work whenever they wanted for completion credit. However, the onus was on them to come and ask to be checked for completion of the learning objective. Sometimes, this would be a discussion with me. For others, it would be a culmination of various tasks: a lab, a report, and a quiz perhaps. It varied based on the objective they were assessing. This method also made sure there was some variety in the day-to-day activity of the class. If a student attempted to prove an objective, but failed to do so adequately, they had an opportunity to reassess. I would give feedback on their weak areas, and students would then be free to use any resources available to re-learn or correct their misconceptions. In traditional settings, learning and assessment are linear. Students are expected to learn, and then they are assessed. There is no feedback other than a grade on the top of the assignment. In the mastery learning system, learning and assessment are in a continuous

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cycle, in which students learn, receive direct feedback during assessment, and then have an opportunity to re-learn and re-assess when they are ready. In addition to the students entering a new cycle, I also became more engaged in the day-today learning and assessment. In a mastery learning model, formative assessment is everpresent. Simple back-and-forth with a student can reveal major misconceptions or highlight student progress. I did not have to wait until a whole-class assessment was given to make these discoveries. I was able to celebrate victory and stave off defeat on the fly, with every student. I felt much more a part of the classroom culture, but not as a sage imparting knowledge, but as a coach, sharing in learning.

12.10 Student response to mastery learning Mastery learning is the largest disruption to the traditional mode of schooling. It disregards the traditional expectation of ‘teacher teaching, students learning’ and replaces it by putting the student in charge of the learning process. This transition is difficult for the teacher and student to make. As the teacher, I understood the long-term goals for the class as mastery learning was implemented. But, because of years of conditioning, my students were reluctant to trust my plans. My attempts to communicate the idea that students would be able to direct their own learning, even down to assessment, were met with trepidation and distrust. I had to work very hard to rebuild a system of trust between pupils and myself. At the same time, students were trying to learn multiple ideas at once, one of them being the course content. I was also teaching digitial citizenship, time management, and what it looks like to really learn something. Content details became secondary in many cases, as I focusd on the process of learning as the main mode of instruction. This included many different formats such as project-based learning, modeling instruction, inquiry learning, and Peer-to-Peer Instruction. After an initial period, usually ranging from two to three months, students began to trust in the system I was building. They began to interact and take more risks in their own learning. Conversations revolved around their own, self-directed learning plans rather than my calendar. Assessment became the norm and not a stress-inducer because students were given a chance to understand the true nature of assessment and how it is used in teaching and learning. Student course evaulations also improved. There were multiple instances of higher satisfaction in the quality of the course as well as more positive responses to the course content. Students no longer feared science because they were given the power to direct their learning, and they discovered that they could find success in difficult tasks.

12.11 Implications for future schools We live in a world where information is available whenever and wherever we need it. Schools are not isolated from this truth. However, in the way we teach, we continue to

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ignore the fact that our students can find information. We expend countless hours of effort into delivering content when we should be spending our time supporting student learning. As teachers, we are content experts through many years of dedicated study and application. We also need to be experts in learning theory. I would posit that the latter is more important. The two areas of skill must work in cooperation, lest we leave students behind for the sake of ‘covering material’. In closing, I want to ask you to think of your favorite teacher in your educational career. I would venture to guess that this individual stands out because of the interactions you had with them. Conversations regarding your growth, candid moments, and personal touches influence us much more than a score on an exam or an evaluation. The privilege of teaching a student is something we have lost sight of in our institutions, and it is our duty to regain the proper vision of teaching and learning. Keller (1968) ends his article with the following words: [The teacher] becomes an educational engineer, a contingency manager, with the responsibility of serving the great majority, rather than the small minority, of young men and women who come to him for schooling in the area of his competence. The teacher of tomorrow will not, I think, continue to be satisfied with a 10% efficiency […]. A new kind of teacher is in the making. To the old kind, I, for one, will be glad to say, “Good-bye!” (88) Remember, this was written in 1968, when there were no (accessible) computers, no mobile phones, and certainly no internet. We have resources available to make this vision of school a reality across the world. However, it will take the commitment and determination of teachers to make it happen.

12.12 References Green, Katie R./Pinder-Grover, Tershia/Millunchick, Joanna M. 2012. Impact of screencast technology: connecting the perception of usefulness and the reality of performance. In: Journal of Engineering Education 101 (4), 717–737. Keller, Fred S. 1968. Good-bye, teacher.... In: Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 1, 79–89. [INT1] Talbert, Robert. 2013. Data on whether and how students watch screencasts. The Chronicle, Casting Out Nines Blog. http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2013/04/04/data-on-whetherand-how-students-watch-screencasts; last accessed on 04/04/2013.

13 Inverting the History Classroom – A First-Hand Report Daniel Bernsen After a discussion with a colleague in my school about the Inverted Classroom, I gave him the – in my eyes – very inspiring book by Bergmann and Sams (2012). A few weeks later, my colleague handed it back to me saying, “Well, nice idea, but I would have to take a year off to then realize that I had better stick to what I know I am doing well.”

13.1

Inverting the high school classroom

While there is a high degree of recognition of the ideas of the Flipped or Inverted Classroom as attempting to change schools and adapting teaching and learning to the conditions and needs of the 21st century, there are only a few university and high school teachers in Germany implementing the model. However, the existing examples of the ICM in all their variety show that a change is possible in every classroom under the given circumstances, and the stagnancy of the educational system can no longer serve as an excuse. It may be that this is a typical German debate. The attention concerning the ICM seems to have been much broader in the media than in German schools (cf. Dworschak, 2012; Holthoff-Stenger, 2012; [INT1]). The news coverage has focused mainly on the production of videos by teachers, although one can say that this is certainly not the most important aspect of flipping the classroom. The public discussion in the U.S. seems very similar [INT2; INT3]. To me, the first German ICM Conference in Marburg in 2012 was the starting point. Having read some articles about the Flipped Classroom, I was quite sceptical about this praised model. It did not seem too revolutionary to source out simple instruction in the form of videos from classroom into homework. Surprisingly, I came back from this conference rather enthusiastic, having understood that the ICM is not about videos but changing the way we teach and learn in school; using videos is just one tool helping to better utilize the time spent together in the classroom. This was, in fact, what I was looking for after having been unsatisfied with the structure of my history classes for quite a while, which I had always prepared in accordance with the way I had learned to do it in my teacher training

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years. So I tried to flip my classes. I did not flip all of them and not at the same time, but within the following months I prepared several teaching unit plans for lower and upper secondary history classes by implementing principles of the ICM and developing the approach further based on evaluations and feedback from the students. By writing this article, I would like to share my experiences. The first step is not easy but also not the most difficult. It is like discovering an unknown island: new, exciting, and maybe a bit dangerous because one is leaving the beaten path. As a teacher, one can feel a bit like an explorer going on an adventure. And that is what it is: leaving the old world behind and sailing to new shores, having only a rough idea but no precise guide to help you. The hardest part is to keep going even if something does not work, even if not everything is perfect at the first time. It is a kind of trial and error. What you need is a strong affinity between your practice and reflection, evaluation, and external feedback. In the end, it was the very positive feedback from students and parents that kept me going despite all problems encountered along the way. I started by producing my first self-made videos and putting them online for everyone to see and use on YouTube. A few years ago, it would not have been imaginable to make a short history film. Nowadays, all you need is a computer and access to the internet. Resources are important, especially pictures. For history, as an example, beautiful images of historical sources are available in the commons of Wikimedia and Flickr, for example, true treasures, under a Creative Commons licence, meaning that you can use them legally for your own history videos. My first videos were a bit of a mess, first attempts to be improved later, but I needed them nevertheless for the planned lessons. I was surprised by the positive reactions the videos received in general. What to me seemed unprofessional was considered authentic, and I was only advised to speak more slowly and to think about giving the videos a more personal touch by adding a picture to my voice. The same goes for the students; they did not laugh at me because of my hardly professional films. Instead they told me that they really enjoyed watching them and, in fact, when I later asked them about the content, they knew a lot more than they usually did after an ordinary preparation with the textbook or an internet research. Unfortunately, I soon discovered the disadvantages of this method of preparing my classes. It took me ages to produce my videos, and having flipped only two of my classes, I had to be able to keep pace with the lessons. Even after the production of a number of videos, with some practice and the feeling of being able to manage the production quite well, producing new videos kept me working for hours. For one minute of video, I still needed approximately 1.5 hours of production time. This was not working for a teaching job with four to six lessons per day. The large amount of time and effort in the video production was mainly due to the fact that lecturing is not part of my lessons. So there was nothing I could record and just put online. Instead, I not only had to write new scripts, but I had to look for images and sources to illustrate the videos and by this, support students' understanding and make the videos more than just a recorded lecture. This is indeed quite different from the situation in universities and U.S. high schools: most of the teachers just film their lectures. One solution may be the use of videos made by other teachers, institutions, or TV channels. Still, there are not many videos freely accessible, and most of the time they do not fit the lesson plan, the curriculum or the learning group.

13.2 From teacher controlled lessons to student controlled learning

13.2

149

From teacher controlled lessons to student controlled learning

With growing experience, I started to understand the terms ‘flipping’ and ‘inverting’ in a different way. Student-centred learning and open learning are not new concepts in education. Despite existing for years, however, they have not been implemented widely in public schools. The selection of topics, media, methods, and learning products is still an almost exclusive right of the teacher. However, as emphasis is being placed on skills and competencies, content is getting more and more exemplary, and more regions are dropping the existing canons for school subjects. Therefore, the choice of these elements could be partly or entirely given to the students. So flipping or inverting the classroom means the gradual transition of teaching time controlled by the teacher into learning time self-determined by the students. Having arrived at this conclusion, I put a hold on producing videos for a Flipped Classroom setting for the time being to focus on inquiry-/design-based learning scenarios as well as the model of learning by teaching. To give one example: In a year seven class, the students, aged thirteen, worked on a project on Roman history. This is part of the curriculum. What was special was that they were working within a European Comenius project which involved several schools. The idea was to discover the history and traces in each region and to present it to students in the other schools. My school is located on the river Rhine, a few kilometres from the Roman Limes; the other schools were in England, France, Spain and Portugal. Once the outline of the project was explained, the students started researching the Roman history of their region and decided in small working groups to focus on different topics like Roman soldiers, existing leftovers, housing and clothing, food and drinks etc. They also decided on how to present their results to the students in the other countries. Maybe not by chance, after my video-based flipped teaching units, they opted for creating screencasts themselves, and even if it was not necessary and far more difficult, they insisted on making their videos in English. Just to clarify, this is an ordinary school, not even a bilingual one. Students felt that they were being taken seriously as they were given the opportunity to tackle the given topic based on their own questions instead of learning ready-made answers from the book or the teacher. Furthermore, their work was not only created to be graded – just on the contrary, we had agreed that the films would not be graded – but aimed at a real public audience. It was very helpful for me as a teacher to have had produced a few videos myself so I could help and advise some students who were struggling with the technical aspects of video production. The efforts the students put into the project were immense. The highlight was watching all the films together in the classroom. One group had even managed to get permission from the Romano-Germanic Museum in Cologne to film in the museum. They travelled there one weekend, about 150 km from their hometown, to see and film the monuments connected to their topic. These three 13-year-old girls organized this trip all by themselves. In all my years as a teacher, I have rarely seen such commitment.

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Of course, the lessons are still subject to the regulatory framework of the curriculum. What has changed fundamentally is my role as a teacher. I am now coaching the work and learning processes of my students, trying to motivate, engage, and, if necessary, guide and help them. At the 2012 conference, Aaron Sams used a great metaphor to illustrate this new role, calling the teacher a sort of ‘GPS for the learner’, showing learners possible ways to reach their goals but leaving them all freedom to take shortcuts or detours, to go slowly or fast. Teachers do not make themselves superfluous; on the contrary, they are needed more than ever. Simple instruction can maybe be replaced by videos or computers, but learning is not instruction, thus we need real humans with expertise in their subjects and methods, in psychology, and pedagogy. Looking through teachers’ blogs, I have found that many colleagues in the U.S. who started to flip their classroom have had similar experiences. Many started by making videos and ended up opening education. That is why I think flipping the classroom can be a first step to a more fundamental change of the culture of learning in one’s classes. The videos take the important role of a catalyst which – step by step – may disappear completely, just like identical homework for each student of a class. Some may argue that there is nothing new and my experiences prove that the often praised digital media are not of much use in school. I do not agree with this. Digital media play an essential part in the development and implementation of a new learning culture in our schools, even if most of the concepts now rediscovered are not new. Their role is threefold: 1.

They give an easy and direct access for teachers and students to information and learning material. Before, the teacher was sort of a hallway guard controlling the entry of materials into the classroom and more or different materials meant loads of copies, thus more work and higher costs. 2.

Digital media are multimedia and therefore offer the learner a different access to the content by combining written texts, visualizations, audio podcasts, videos, and so on.

3.

They expand and individualize the scope of learning material and ways of expression, and thus learning outcomes and products created by students.

To sum up, digital media play a key role in opening education, facilitating differentiation of contents, products, and approaches.

13.3

How to start flipping a history classroom and what to do within the lesson at school

If you would like to start changing your lessons, here are some proposals to make your life easier when you first try to free your classroom time by creating videos. To flip your classroom for the first time, there are four basic stages: 1.

Preparation

2.

Learning at home

3.

Learning in school

13.3 How to start flipping a history classroom and what to do within the lesson 4.

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Evaluation

13.3.1 Preparation The first step to do is to find, or better create, a short video summarizing the information about the topic in a way your students will understand, covering all important aspects given by the curriculum. In history it might be useful not to film yourself lecturing but to use images, drawings, and maps to support understanding. This way, with the help of screencasting software, you really create a video which facilitates learning using the possibilities of visualization. If you film only yourself speaking, you could just as well make an audio recording. It is also advisable to use easy language with short sentences. If you do not explain the content freely but rather choose to prepare a text to read aloud, keep in mind that you are writing to be heard, not to be read. If you are not used to this, you will find some useful advice in manuals for talk radio hosts.

13.3.1.1 Creating your first video in six steps Videos can be created following six simple steps: 1.

Write your own text.

2.

Look for images (primary and secondary sources) to illustrate your text.

3.

Connect text and images in a storyboard.

4.

Produce your video (recording images and sound) with screencasting software.

5.

Edit your video (e.g. adding text information, zoom, arrows, etc.).

6.

Publish your video.

To get some inspiration, it is helpful to look at how other teachers have made their videos. Take a close look at the way they explain history to their students, copy the elements of their style you like, and avoid the boring bits. On YouTube, you will find several channels run by history teachers in German as well as English. If you are looking for images, the following sites are very helpful. It is important to have a close look at the copyright license and to get informed about the Creative Commons model [INT10]. You will find loads of old photographs which you can use legally under different terms in the Flickr commons [INT11]. Regional and national archives, libraries, and museums from all over the world have cooperated with Flickr and put parts of their collections online. The same goes for the Wikimedia Commons [INT12], where you can find great picture resources on older epochs like the Middle Ages or the Antiquity. It is also worth looking at your local or regional archives if they have interesting materials and are willing and able to provide you with them for your videos. If you are looking for comicstrip characters, symbols and signs, OpenClipArts [INT13] is the first place to search. All items are displayed under public domain and therefore can be used freely. In my experience, it has proven helpful not only to explain in class what the Flipped Classroom is about but also to write a short text explaining the main idea and your plans for the next lessons. This text will provide information for your students as well as their

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parents. So far, I have had very good reactions to these texts. Parents who claim they are not normally made aware of what is going on in the classroom by teachers have really appreciated the transparency of the planning and the lessons.

13.3.2 Learning at home According to statistics, 100 % of students – at least in Germany – have access to the internet at home. Nevertheless, most teachers have had experiences similar to the following: When assigning homework which makes it necessary to use the internet, quite a considerable rate of students claim not to have had access when they wanted desperately to do their homework. Of course, there are always several plausible reasons for which the internet did not work, and some of them may be true. However, generally speaking, it is very unlikely to find students in secondary schools without any internet access. You can reduce the number of students who fail to complete online homework significantly by always assigning an alternative homework they can complete using only their text or exercise book in the case of a lack of internet access. Interestingly enough, soon you will get the statistically proven 100 % internet access rate at home. It is important to note that the alternative homework assignment is not meant to be punishment; rather it is equivalent and is offered in case there is really a technical problem at home. In my experience, interested students sometimes do both homework assignments; they watch the video and read the chapter in their textbook. Some started comparing them and developing questions about differences in the presentations of the historical content. This is great! If this occurs, use it for your lessons. It is a perfect way to promote historical thinking. This effect also demonstrates the importance of learning material procured by the teacher and the school even in time of unlimited access to information via the internet, at least for some of the students. As simply reading sometimes proves to be somewhat ineffective, the creation of short exercises to check one’s understanding is recommendable. You can link the interactive exercise in or next to your videos, and students can evaluate themselves at home to determine whether they understand the presentations of the historical contents correctly. An excellent tool to produce such self-monitoring exercises is for example the website LearningApps.org.

13.3.3 Learning in school and evaluation If you take a look at the forums on the Flipped Classroom on the internet, one of the main questions seems to be: “What am I going to do with the time in my lessons in school now?” At the start of the lessons you should spare five to ten minutes for questions, problems and revision. The rest of your lesson is then free for things like inquiry-based and design-based learning or contextualizing and analyzing sources together as well as for classroom discussions. It is important to state that by flipping the classroom students have already gained a broad context to start working more in-depth, to analyze and discuss primary sources. As a history teacher, you know how hard it is for many students to understand the academic language of the sources. Often this is where they need help. In the Flipped Classroom, they get this help from their peers and from their teacher as the lessons are now

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freed from lecturing. At home, they no longer struggle with difficult tasks. If you ever choose to flip your class, start thinking about what you want to do in your lessons instead of reading in the textbook or lecturing. In any case, prepare to offer students a variety of changing approaches and methods instead of just switching to a different boring way of teaching and just another style of monotony. The main advantage of flipping the classroom is that students can work on their own and in small groups, focusing their questions on history and allowing the teacher to advise and guide them according to their individual needs. Of course, it is true that some students will not be eager to work. But again, you now have time to talk to them individually and thereby discover the reasons for this behaviour, which may have nothing to do with you and your lesson. You may also be able to help them discover how to establish historical significance for themselves. When students work on their own or in small groups for a longer period, management of time and workload is important. If you opt for a design-based learning scenario, students not watching the videos or not working in the classroom may present only a small problem as in the end they simply have to hand in a product derived from their working and learning processes which will be graded individually. It is important to be transparent about this from the beginning. Students have to learn to take responsibility for their learning and through this class structure, they can start doing so. Nevertheless, you may encounter the problem of parents and older siblings helping with the learning media at home. As for the students not being motivated in the classroom, you also find this problem in traditional lessons with traditional homework.

13.4

Conclusion

After having gained experience with the Inverted Classroom Model in several lesson units, I have seen some major changes. To use design-based and inquiry-based learning scenarios offers a lot of advantages. In the lower secondary classes, history is mainly an oral subject. Based on the learning outcomes of the students and the products they create you can give very precise and differentiated feedback and individual diagnoses on what and how students learn history. However, it should also be noted that this may also increase your workload as a teacher. All in all, the written and oral feedback from my students was very positive. Of course, not everyone liked the topics of the lessons, but they enjoyed watching the videos and preferred them to their textbooks. This does not mean that we will read less, but rather differently: in the classroom, we are now deciphering difficult sources and interpreting different perspectives on history together, which would be far too demanding for many students alone at home.

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13 Inverting the History Classroom – A First-Hand Report

References

Bergmann, Jonathan/Sams, Aaron. 2012. Flip Your Classroom. Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Eugene, Oregon: ISTE. Handke, Jürgen. 2013b. The VLC Video Strategy. In this volume, 59–75. Dworschak, Manfred. 2012. Gefangen in der Kreidezeit. In: Der Spiegel 29 (2012), 124–127. Holthoff-Stenger, Monika. 2012. Flip die Klasse! In: Focus Schule 4, 66–69. Loviscach, Jörn. 2013. The Inverted Classroom. Where to go from here. In this volume, 3–12. Spannagel, Christian/Spannagel, Janna. 2013. Designing in-class activities in the Inverted Classroom Model. In this volume, 113–120. [INT1] Fays, Jean-Charles. 2012. Mathe-Prof als YouTube-Star: Also sprach Zahl-Athustra. Spiegel Online: Unispiegel. http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/mathe-professorloviscach-vorlesung-bei-youtube-a-843076.html; last accessed on 12/05/2013. [INT2] Bergmann, Jon/Overmyer, Jerry/Wilie, Brett. 2011. The Flipped Class: What it is and what it is not. The Daily Riff, 21/06/2011. http://www.thedailyriff.com/articles/theflipped-class-conversation-689.php; last accessed on 14/04/2012. [INT3] Bergmann, Jon. 2012. Myth: Flipped Learning is All About the Videos. http://flippedlearning.com/?p=1064; last accessed on 12/05/2013. [INT4] Durley, Carolyn. 2012. Flipped classroom renovates mindset. http://flipperteach.com/2012/12/09/flipped-classroom-renovates-mindset; last accessed on 12/05/2013. [INT5] Lattimore, Laurie. Broadcasting writing style tips. http://www.jprof.com/broadcasting/bcstyletips.html; last accessed on 12/05/2013. [INT6] Flipped History http://www.youtube.com/flippedhistory; last accessed on 12/05/2013. [INT7] SeGu Geschichte. http://www.youtube.com/user/seguGeschichte; last accessed on 12/05/2013. [INT8] Flipped History Videos. http://www.youtube.com/user/FlippedHistoryVideos; last accessed on 12/05/2013. [INT9] The Flipped History Classroom. http://www.youtube.com/user/mrbaldwinbrcs; last accessed on 12/05/2013. [INT10] Creative Commons. http://creativecommons.org; last accessed on 12/05/2013. [INT11] Flickr Commons. http://www.flickr.com/commons; last accessed on 12/05/2013. [INT12] Wikimedia Commons. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/; last accessed on 12/05/2013. [INT13] Open Clipart. http://openclipart.org/; last accessed on 12/05/2013. [INT14] Learning Apps. http://learningapps.org/; last accessed on 12/05/2013.

14 Inverting a Competence-Based EFL Classroom – A Model for Advanced Learner Activation? Dirk Weidmann When evaluating the last decade, the German educational system has proven to be subject to constant alteration. In addition to various attempts aspiring, for instance, to the reduction of school years and to the regular modification of subject-specific curricula, the gradual abandonment of the formerly well-established input orientation for the benefit of a competence-based outcome orientation has been perceived as an epoch-making change of paradigm (cf. Faulstich-Christ, 2010: 61ff., 69f.; Moegling, 2010: 11–15, 27). Consequently, educationalists have developed a plethora of new teaching concepts which should be characterized by a higher degree of learner-orientated interactivity, and finally – to use the terminology of economics – by an increase in efficiency (cf. Lersch, 2010: 38– 46). 1 As previous reports have already suggested, the Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) appears to be particularly suitable for achieving the goals of contemporary didactics (cf. Schäfer, 2012: 9f.). While bearing in mind both the fundamental changes as well as the already collected data from the author’s current project, which is an integral part of a second state examination for future teachers, the aim of this article is to present a variation of the traditional ICM concept. The core of this variation features learning material that is developed by the learners for their classmates. This approach is currently in trial and promises to even augment some of the immanent advantages and chances of already established ICM versions (cf. Weidmann, 2012: 60–66). In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to initially clarify the context of German education politics and its major consequences for foreign language teaching. Since any variation of the ICM affects the structure and organization of a class, it seems advisable to introduce learning routes as common planning instruments of modern foreign language classes in order to connect this idea to the methods of inverting a classroom. Afterwards, the new ICM-variant is introduced in ten steps which help to illustrate the approach. To _________________ 1

For critical remarks on the connection between education and efficiency see Schmitt, 2010.

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conclude this article, a tentative trend concerning the noticeable effects of this modification will be offered. A detailed description and evaluation of all empirically observable results will be subject of a later publication.

14.1

The emergence of the German national standards of education and its impacts on contemporary foreign language teaching

For a prolonged period of time, the German school system relied on subject-based curricula as official control mechanisms for teaching. They were periodically revised and served as mandatory plans, thereby assigning various topics or methods to certain levels of proficiency (cf. Siebold, 2010: 15f.). In the aftermath of several international comparative studies like TIMSS, PISA, and IGLU, however, it became obvious that pure inputorientation could not lead to satisfying results (cf. [KMK], 2005: 9). Experts soon agreed that both a predetermination as well as a constant evaluation of relevant skills would have been vital for a more successful performance. Therefore, in 2003, the implementation of national standards of education heralded the start of a new educational paradigm in Germany. In contrast to a constant minimum competency test based on high-stakes testing, which, for instance, most parts of the U.S. had adopted in the 1970s, the responsible team of experts rejected these approaches against the backdrop of their doubtful quality. 2 Instead, the final expert report on introducing national standards of education – commonly known as ‘Klieme-Expertise’ – maintains that these scales should not correspond to previous educational objectives, but rather orientate themselves towards broader objectives (cf. Klieme, 2003: 58). In order to match these requirements, the experts in charge finally suggested that the standards should not demand special topics or methods for a certain age; they should preferably define more general requirements to be met at a specific moment in time, e.g. at the end of a pupil’s school career (cf. Zeitler/Köller/Tesch, 2010: 12–14). As a consequence, task-based language learning and teaching was transferred to the center of attention and opened up new perspectives for both academic research and educational activity (cf. De Florio-Hansen/Klewitz, 2010: 12–14). When opting for a method of measuring pupils’ performance, ‘Can Do-Statements’ – i.e. competence-oriented descriptions – served as a key for bringing the national scales to the schools since these phrases conduce to focus on the pupils’ disposition to solve pre-defined challenges or problems (cf. Zeitler/Köller/Tesch, 2010: 23f.). In a German context, the term ‘competence’ is grounded in a concise, learning theory-based definition offered by Franz E. Weinert. According to him, competences are cognitive abilities necessary to master certain problems. Consequently, they can either be acquired during a learning route or are already

_________________ 2

See Hattie, 2009: 179: “There have been arguments that such frequent testing is akin to a teaching effect, whereas others consider that any gains are because of narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, and because too many students are excluded who may not perform so well.”

14.2 Learning-task schemes as long-term planning tools

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at the learner’s disposal. Moreover, this term is said to cover the motivational, volitional, and social readiness to adapt possible solutions for the problem in other contexts. 3 Of course, competences need to be developed and enhanced on the basis of concrete content. However, they are bound neither to specific topics nor to particular methods, but instead are solely geared to an outcome which satisfies the broader standardized requirements specified by the The Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany. 4 As a consequence, teachers benefit from an increased freedom to meet the individual needs of their pupils. 5 With respect to foreign language classes, a set of core competences has been defined by educationalists in order to establish learning goals for single lessons or entire teaching units. This catalogue first includes a wide range of language skills including the areas of writing, reading, listening, speaking, and mediation. 6 In addition, intercultural, methodological, social and personal competences have also made their way into this system. Moreover, as languages are taught in a content-based way, the degree to which learners have increased their general and content-specific knowledge after successfully finishing the tasks is also crucial (cf. Haß, 2006: 70–72). From the perspective of presentday didactics, Frank Haß (2006: 74–139) offers a concise description of these major competences and also hones ideas of how to foster the learners’ success in these areas. In terms of language proficiency, descriptors are based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) which was developed by the Council of Europe and is nowadays widely accepted as the European standard for grading the language proficiency of an individual. 7

14.2

Learning-task schemes as long-term planning tools

When opting for competence-based foreign language teaching, the teacher’s ability to design and manage challenging tasks has proven to be one of the crucial points of planning. Among these challenges are the development of an adequate task-complexity, a high degree _________________ 3

See Weinert, 2001: 27f.: “[Kompetenzen sind] die bei Individuen verfügbaren oder durch sie erlernbaren kognitiven Fähigkeiten und Fertigkeiten, um bestimmte Probleme zu lösen, sowie die damit verbundenen motivationalen, volitionalen und sozialen Bereitschaften und Fähigkeiten, um die Problemlösungen in variablen Situationen erfolgreich und verantwortungsvoll nutzen zu können.“

4

See Zeitler/Köller/Tesch, 2010: 28-32. For examples of national standards of education, see [INT1].

5

For a preliminary survey of some major problems and inequalities emerging during the nationwide implementation of the national standards in the German federal states, see Lin-Klitzing (2007: 99-103).

6

See Haß, 2006: 73f.; Haß, 2012.

7

See [INT2] and Haß, 2006: 50–53.

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of transparency, a meaningful context, and a definition of the zone of proximal development (cf. Hallet, 2012: 12f.). In order to finally arrive at an interesting and multifarious task facilitating the successful demonstration of abilities by students, it is vital to gradually prepare the learners for this task (cf. Hallet, 2012: 14–18). In accordance with the concept of a progressive spiral curriculum, both a set of (shorter) preparative learning tasks and various elements of scaffolding help to pave the way for realizing the overall intellectual challenge. Here, learning-task schemes have turned out to be a feasible longterm planning tool enabling teachers to locate single lessons within a broader context (cf. Gerlach/Goworr/Schluckebier, 2012: 3–19). If turned into practice, the model introduced by Eynar Leupold (2010) seems to be especially promising since the learner remains in the center of attention. Leupold offers a detailed account of his understanding of competencebased foreign language teaching. According to his point of view, lessons should be built on communicative tasks designed to manifoldly foster the learners’ abilities within an authentic, reality-oriented setting. Gerlach et al. (2012) succeed in vigorously illustrating Leupold’s didactic credo, which forms the basis of his concept of learning-tasks, and lay emphasis on the fact that learning tasks strive for learner-oriented principles of teaching while considering the learners’ initial competences and interests as well as the curricula or national standards respectively as indispensable components of successful learning. 8 When referring to individual learning capabilities, Leupold’s assumptions may certainly imply the aspect of heterogeneity, one of the core problem areas at school with which teachers are constantly confronted in their day-to-day work. In this context, Leupold (2008) offers three types of exercises, each of them preparing the learners for the successful mastery of a certain competence (e.g. to deliver a speech, to talk about past events, to write a letter of application, etc.). With increasing degrees of complexity, these types include: 1.

scaffolding tasks (Übungen), 2.

situative tasks (situative Aufgaben), and

3.

one final product-oriented learning task (produktorientierte Lernaufgabe).

Following the explications of Leupold (2008: 6f.), • Tasks of type I are form-related and designed to either introduce or practice certain linguistic structures, phrases, and methods. • Tasks of type II aim to embed the previously learnt structures within a first applicationoriented scenario, thereby putting the foreign language into practice and thus attributing meaning to those problems tackled in exercises of type I. • Tasks of type III finally demand a variety of competences. Due to their openness, they allow a wide range of approaches towards a solution and offer more than just one possibility for free linguistic action. In addition, they are characterized by a constant process-orientation and finally result in both a product and an appropriate presentation. Furthermore, learners are encouraged to rely on their general world knowledge in order _________________ 8

See Gerlach/Goworr/Schluckebier, 2012: 4: “Lernaufgaben im Sinne Leupolds orientieren sich didaktisch am Prinzip der Lernerorientierung bei Berücksichtigung der Lernausgangslage und den Interessen Lernender und an dem Lehrplan bzw. den Bildungsstandards, somit an den für den angestrebten Kompetenzerwerb erforderlichen Inhalten und Kompetenzbereichen.”

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to successfully solve the task at hand, and, in doing so, they link language phenomena to concrete fields of application. Wolfgang Steveker (2011) suggests the arrangement of these tasks in a course-like structure:

Figure 14.1: ‘Learning Routes’, as presented by Steveker, 2011: 7, adapted from Leupold, 2008: 43.

By taking authentic and topic-related material as a starting point, the teacher fosters the motivation of his or her pupils. This initial step is displayed in the box on the left-hand side of Figure 14.1. While successfully completing the set of activites, pupils are finally confronted with a challenging learning task which is described in the box on the right-hand side. After having experienced the introduction to the topic, it is necessary to continue reading the plan from the right-hand side since it is conceptualized from the perspective of the teacher who should have defined his teaching objective in advance for reasons of effective planning. 9 The final product is equal to a type III exercise in Leupold’s hierarchy or, with respect to the terminology of the German national standards of education, to the overall ‘outcome’. According to Steveker’s model, then, the teacher has to develop a variety of different preparatory tasks of type II in order to arrive at the intended final task. Pupils are asked to solve these exercises in order to gain the qualifications needed for mastering the last challenge. Again, teachers are responsible for taking appropriate measures to facilitate and improve their learners’ activity even at this early step. Hence, it is vital that pupils are able to rely on a plethora of scaffolding elements (i.e. type I exercises in Leupold’s terminology) to acquire all those aspects of grammar, lexis, and methodology which will be relevant for successfully fulfilling the given tasks of type II and III. When performing basic exercises of type I, pupils are already asked to individually improve their abilities, also because they should have the chance to ask for individual assistance and to fall back on internally differentiated learning material provided by the teacher. To conclude this section of the article, organizing foreign language classes according to the principles of competence-based learning-tasks is very likely to foster an integrating development of the communicative competences of pupils since learners acquire skills _________________ 9

This is why the arrows necessarily indicate the planning steps and not the order in which the content is actually about to appear in the foreign language classroom, or, as Steveker (2011: 43) puts it: “Die Pfeile geben das Vorgehen bei der Unterrichtsplanung, nicht die Durchführungsschritte, an.”

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within the broader context of the actual task. 10 Furthermore, if the learning route were made transparent and accessible by means of an advanced organizer, this would be likely to have an important impact on pupils’ motivation and success, as John Hattie’s research suggests (2009: 131–169). In addition, the consistant employment of criteria-based in-class feedback processes also facilitates the success of the project. 11 This is why the role of the teacher inevitably changes within this setting: he cannot remain in the position of the instructor that he used to embody for a long period over the previous century. He necessarily transforms into a coach-like learning facilitator providing methods and content-related assistance while encouraging his pupils to develop their own strategies and, if possible, individual solutions. 12 As soon as we realize these fundamental changes in the teacher’s self-concept which are about to lead him away from the center of attention, it becomes obvious that, in turn, the activity of the learners has to increase immensely: they now need to take over the responsibility of being in charge of their own learning success. Seen from this new perspective, the teacher only facilitates learning through both planning the setting and offering adequate material and methods. The pupils, however, personally take responsibility and decide on accepting these offers and individually draw from them in order to master the given tasks.

14.3

Learner activation in a learning-task environment

The ICM variation to be proposed will consequently adheres to the previously mentioned ideas of modern foreign language teaching, to competence-based lesson planning, and to a modified self-concept of teachers. When examining the ramifications of the last assumption, the author of this article favours the idea that learners should also participate in the development of their own learning material since this step would immensely contribute to the enhancement of a variety of their competences, most strikingly to their social and self-competences. In this case, a proverb commonly attributed to Confucius served as a guiding principle: I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. Based on the author’s own observations, pupils can not only take responsibility for their own learning success, but also for their classmates’. Hence, the author maintains that it can be beneficial in some cases for reasons of legitimacy and/or learning success 13 to transfer the responsibility for the successful mastery of selected elements of a learning route to the _________________ 10

For task-based language learning, see Ellis, 2003, and Müller-Hartmann/Schocker-von Ditfurth, 2010.

11

See Hattie, 2009: 173-178, and Goworr, 2010.

12

See Meyer, 2007: 166–168, and Gerlach/Goworr/Schluckebier, 2012: 5f.

13

See Green/Green, 2005: 26: “Die Zusammenarbeit mit anderen, die unterschiedliche Stile und Ansichten haben, verbessert Lernen. Die, die die Arbeit machen, sind die, die lernen.”

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pupils themselves, so that in this case the learning process is complexly maintained and fostered, especially by a conglomerate of nine different mental activities which have been described by Renate Girmes (2004: 120f.): recognizing, participating, producing, persisting, interacting/talking, thinking, judging, accepting, and distinguishing. Without any doubt, learning scenarios which simultaneously stimulate this wealth of mental activities contribute immensely to an educational formation which may potentially lead to the comprehensive understanding of education shown in Figure 14.2. It goes without saying that in this scenario the teacher himself has to literally dive into the topic since pupils come up with a bunch of questions asking for content-specific information as well as for methods of how to grasp, process, and present their findings. Again, the teacher should not predetermine all the results his pupils are going to present in class: it is rather his main task to apply clever questioning techniques in order to activate his students’ prior knowledge of the topic and to hint at other options. In addition to his new role, he of course remains in the position of being the first filter for the working results of his students; before distributing material to all class-members, it clearly falls within his remit and leadership to ensure the quality of each product so that the final results may serve as reliable sources of reference for the class. Even though in this scenario it is not the teacher but the learners who develop material for the class, the project may remain open to individually differentiated approaches towards the topic at hand. Based on their interests, for instance, students could choose their task from a list of various topics. Alternatively, internal differentiation may be realized by adjusting the degree of rendering assistance when the teacher is asked for help. When setting up tasks and material for the class, the ‘expert teams’ could come up with all possible options of internal differentiation. In practice, the author witnessed that pupils indeed appear more than happy to offer a small set of options for their classmates – given the fact that the overall atmosphere in class is esteeming. This does not imply that the author expects his pupils to emulate or even surpass the performance of their teachers who have experienced thorough and profound teacher training. Nonetheless, pupils of a certain age are likely to be familiar with both common ways of differentiation as well as methods of learner activation. If fostered and enhanced consistently over a longer period of time in various learning contexts, these methods might provide a wealth of ideas for learner-centred lessons. When teachers have finally decided to plan a teaching unit that puts learners in charge of their progress, it will soon turn out to be of tremendous advantage if lessons are organized with the help of the aforementioned learning route introduced by Steveker. As soon as the teacher has figured out the final learning task, he can start establishing the setting that enables his pupils to develop their own material, etc. In order to avoid confusion, it has proven to be most productive if learners initially concentrate on preparing selected elements of scaffolding, since these parts are less complex. After they have become more acquainted with creative work, pupils may also opt for establishing a situative learning task in order to apply the elements of scaffolding in the context of a real-world scenario. In any case, the introductory lesson(s) should remain in the responsibility of the teacher so that he continues to be able to lead into the topic and to set the framework for the upcoming sequence of lessons.

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Figure 14.2: ‘Compass of Education’, as suggested by Girmes, 2004: 102f.

14.4 Ten steps towards establishing a learner-centred ICM within a learning-

14.4

163

Ten steps towards establishing a learner-centred ICM within a learning-task environment

The following descriptions specify core elements of a project conducted in an English foreign language (EFL) classroom of grade seven in a German secondary education context. As for the overall aims, learners were mainly supposed to improve their functional linguistic abilities needed for successfully compiling a report. Writing a report is considered to be an important step towards the augmentation of the written language skills of a learner since it is necessary to have mastered various sub-skills beforehand, including pre-writing strategies, the knowledge of a set of linking words, and, of course, certain grammatical structures that are likely to occur in a stylistically appealing report (cf. Porsch, 2010: 59). Consequently, a learning-task environment based on Steveker’s propositions seems most appropriate due to both the systematic skills development and the intended knowledge transfer. And even though this learning objective originally stemmed from the analysis of some text samples of the pupils which had revealed the existence of a variety of problem areas, it was obvious that a wide range of other topics would also benefit from the systematic revision of selected grammatical issues. Despite the variations of learners’ individual abilities, the statistic data collected at the beginning of the lesson sequence clearly indicated that most problems occurred • in connection with passive voice structures, • in the realm of the correct use of several past tenses (simple past vs. present perfect vs. past perfect), • in the context of indirect speech, and, although less frequently, • in the domain of adjectives in distinction to adverbs. When first presented to the learners, all topics had been subject to various in-class exercises before, and two of them – indirect speech and passive voice – had only recently been introduced to the learners. For the purpose of this article, the main steps of the scheme are explained in chronological order to shed light on the underlying method. As already mentioned before, more details including a full description of the learners’ initial and final competences, statistical data for further evidence as well as a thorough evaluation of the lesson sequence will appear in a later publication to be submitted after the author’s final examinations.

14.4.1 Step 1: Diagnosis of initial competences In a competence-oriented learning environment, it is vital to carefully examine the learners’ competences in order to develop meaningful follow-up tasks or assistance measures. Omitting this important step is equal to ignoring your students’ abilities. Without a thorough collection and evaluation of a sufficient quantity of data, all follow-up tasks offered to the class run the risk of missing the target. In order to avoid trying a shot in the dark, teachers have several options at hand enabling them to arrive at a valid amount of records. Introductory quizzes, (standardized) questionnaires, or – for older pupils – self-

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evaluation forms may serve as prominent examples for collecting data. Each method, however, implies a set of advantages and disadvantages, therefore teachers have to decide on a method which provides the utmost information that is essential to further develop certain skills. For the project in focus, the author decided to combine various formats. When he took over the class, he first conducted a free online test offered by the publisher of the English book used in this class. Even though it did not cover all possible competences, the results gave a first summary of the average problem fields of the learners. During the school year, the pupils had to complete several tests, and the author of this article continuously took notes when he got the impression that certain mistakes remained or had become more frequent. After the pupils had solved the first situative learning task, their products were additionally analyzed in terms of linguistic problems, and the findings were combined with the data which had previously been collected. This combination of methods finally offered a profound basis for undertaking a language-focused learning task.

14.4.2 Step 2: Establishing the learning route After having identified the core areas of work, the author compiled a learning route that should culminate in a written report about a topic related to sports in Great Britain. As mentioned earlier in this article, language aspects should never be taught in isolation, but are to be embedded within a topic in order to help pupils establish the link between form and function. The underlying idea for including the topics Great Britain and sports into the route was designed to meet the demands of the current curriculum which mentions them as obligatory topics in grade 7 [INT3: 23]. Based on their written performance, the pupils were assigned to the above-mentioned grammar topics. In case one learner had more than just one problem area to work on, he or she was free to individually decide for one team. In order to guarantee stable teams, they had to form groups of three or four. Finally, they received a schedule serving as an advanced organizer and a checklist to be applied on any written product. In addition, both a collection of grammar books as well as a plethora of exercise books were brought to class so that pupils could scan the material for relevant information. Moreover, the author fortunately had the chance to set up six notebooks with internet access in the classroom, later offering the possibility for the groups to conduct further online research and to compile handouts and self-check material.

14.4.3 Step 3: Researching information At this step, the pupils were eager to start working in their teams to collect and reacquire basic knowledge of their grammar topic. Since group work had been done several times before, there was no need to repeat the rules of successfully working in groups. During this phase, the author mostly remained observant while milling around the class. For reasons of fostering the pupils’ self-competence, he did not actively intervene in the learning process, but waited until asked for help. At the end of their research, however, each group had to briefly explain the phenomena in question to their teacher in order to ensure that they would successful proceed with the project.

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165

14.4.4 Step 4: Preparing ICM-compatible material After having completed the research, the teams arrived at a decisive point within their learning route since all class-members had to be informed about the findings of the various groups in order to be prepared for further in-class work. When looking for an appropriate format for the material which should – in a next step – serve as a basis for the individual out-of-school-preparation of the members of the other teams at home, specialized literature is also made available to offer important advice on this topic. According to Handke (2012: 40), established learning material addressing only one channel of perception (such as texts, handouts, podcasts, etc.) is not very apt to equip someone with knowledge since an additional value fails to be achieved. When focusing on the special demands of ICM settings, Handke adds that only multimedia-based learning material, videos, or the combination of both have turned out to be particular promising (Handke, 2012: 40). Due to the fact that the class should have time to repeat the topics at an individual pace, each team was asked to produce a short film to be watched by the others at home. By applying this technology, learners can easily go back to core scenes and benefit from multiple-encoded information. In practice, the teams explained the relevant grammatical issues in their own words, following the principles of ‘show-and-tell’ by falling back either on every-day items they brought to school or on the equipment available in the classroom, such as the black board or an over-head projector. As a concession, learners were authorized to offer their explanations in German because their language skills would not have allowed giving a talk on an abstract grammar topic in the target language. To finally accommodate a wish of his pupils, the learner also accepted that each team compiled an additional handout with the basic rules and examples related to the grammar topic – despite the fact that, according to Handke (2012: 49), this supplementary material would probably cause only a nominal effect.

14.4.5 Step 5: Generating self-tests As a next step, the teams were asked to develop a short self-test enabling their classmates to immediately check whether they had mastered the content, a concept that will certainly remind the reader of Flipped-Mastery Models. 14 Current research conducted at Harvard University has stressed the importance of early and regular testing, especially when working in front of a computer: Students who were tested after a segment showed a marked drop in mind-wandering and improved overall retention of material [INT4]. Likewise, testing appears at the upper end of John Hattie’s study, hence laying further emphasis on the all-important role of tests. Since this is intended to be a first chance for feedback on the individual learning progress, the self-test should be easily accessible at home. Furthermore, self-tests have to stimulate short answers in order to not overwhelm the pupils with a vast amount of written homework. Last but not least, yet another premise for generating self-tests was the teacher’s opportunity for an early evaluation of the overall learning progress of the course: if the tests were designed online, the teacher could easily collect statistic data indicating to what extent _________________ 14

See Bergmann/Sams, 2012: 9–10, 51–76.

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the pupils had already mastered the topic. When necessary, he could think about options for further revision in order to support the weaker students. In the course of the actual project, the students were finally introduced to the free online test generator Testmoz which enables users to develop a functional test in a short period of time [INT5]. For ensuring the quality of the material, the learners agreed that the teams would first show their online content to the teacher before publishing it online. 15 Currently, learners are busy compiling their short online tests, and the author has not encountered any serious problems during this step.

14.4.6 Step 6: Preparing an in-class exercise It is intended that the teams continue working together for one more step in order to develop a creative in-class exercise for their classmates. The exercise to be developed has to cover a time frame of 15 to 20 minutes and should be related to the curriculum topics Great Britain and/or Sports. Embedding the exercises within the context determined by the curriculum helps to repeat the relevant vocabulary items and also opens up the possibility to even enlarge the scope and overall quantity of words. Furthermore, pupils are free to raise own content-based questions and to introduce different perspectives and facets. All in all, by limiting the number of possible subject matter to the overall course topics, i.e. sports and Great Britain, pupils are more likely to stay focused since they do not go off on a tangent. After having developed some exercises, the teamwork will come to an end. The teams will be asked to evaluate their group work, and each member of the group will have the chance to reflect on his or her individual growth in competences.

14.4.7 Step 7: Starting the first phase of the ICM As soon as all the materials are ready, the pupils agree on an order of succession for the various topics. Adhering to the sequence traditionally applied within an ICM context, the learners will first prepare the relevant grammar topic at home while using the material which has been prepared by the responsible group as step 4. 16 Afterwards, the learners have to take the self-test as an obligatory component of the homework. In case some aspects remain unclear to the pupils, they will be asked to carefully watch the explanations again before bringing the question to class. As indicated above, the teacher will keep an observant eye on the self-test results to closely monitor the first attempts in progress.

14.4.8 Step 8: Initiating the second phase of the ICM When meeting in class in order to put the abstract knowledge obtained hitherto into practice, pupils will have the chance to initially pose questions to the expert team. Since the focus will be on practice at this stage, prolonged repetitions of already given explanations _________________ 15

An example for a learner-created self-test will be offered in a later publication.

16

Before starting the project, the author inquired about the pupils’ possibilities of having access to a web-enabled computer at home.

14.4 Ten steps towards establishing a learner-centred ICM within a learning-

167

in front of the whole class are to be avoided. Instead, detailed questions should be postponed until the task has been given to the group. During the following exercise, members of the expert team may offer detailed explanations at a special help desk and could also refer the pupil to the teacher, if necessary. In the course of the in-class meeting, the presenting team’s task is twofold: On the one hand, they are responsible for the moderation and evaluation of the exercise; on the other hand they are in charge of offering further help to their classmates. Once the exercise has been accomplished and evaluated, the class provides criteria-based feedback for the expert team, mirroring motivating factors as well as aspects of improvement. The relevant feedback criteria will be collected before the first ICM in-class session.

14.4.9 Step 9: Completing the remaining learning route As soon as the pupils will have successfully mastered both the revision and the concrete application of the relevant grammar topics, they will continue to work according to the overall learning route to advance to the final creation of a report. In order to approach this task, further training could address, for instance, methods of collecting and organizing ideas as pre-writing activities, the compilation of an introductory sentence, or the organization of a text by means of paragraphing.

14.4.10 Step 10: Self-evaluation, feedback, and formative assessment The purpose of this final step is to collect manifold data which reliably indicate starting points for future in-class work and help to further improve the concept for its application in other scenarios. Two elements appear to be essential for these aims: First, pupils should evaluate the project and have a chance to profoundly express their opinion. The last point implies that a sincere desire is inherent in the teacher to constantly improve his lessons. In this case, pupils have to be encouraged to voice both positive and negative aspects related to the project as well as suggestions for improvement. In order to ensure honest feedback, this part could probably be best organized in terms of an anonymous feedback-form. Second, since the overall aim of a learning route is to foster selected, i.e. pre-defined skills, it is strongly advisable to additionally test the ultimate increase of these competences by means of peer feedback and self assessment as well as formative assessment. 17 The final results enable both the teacher and the learners to define updated can-do statements and to classify the learner’s skills within a more complex system like the above-mentioned CEFR. If condensed to a chart, the ten steps which help to establish a learner-centred ICM within a learning-task environment could be integrated into the following scheme which is based on a Steveker learning route:

_________________ 17

For the importance of peer and self assessment as well as formative assessment, see Maier, 2010, and Tollhurst, 2012: 127-136.

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Figure 14.3: First suggestion for integrating a learner-centred ICM within a learning-task environment.

14.5 Conclusion

169

In addition to refining the concept of teaching the ICM in a more learner-centred environment, the author’s future research will also focus on improving the way of illustrating the concept. Even though Steveker’s and Leupold’s suggestion to rely on learning tasks as benchmarks appears to be reasonable at first glance, their method of visualization could still be improved for reasons of clarity and comprehensibility.

14.5

Conclusion

When bearing in mind the fact that each student learns differently, it seems to be impossible to meet everybody’s needs in every lesson – an insight which may evoke a high potential of frustration. Owing to skills-based learning, however, several challenges can optimistically be accepted, as Demuth and Meyer (2010: 17) point out. In their perception, competencebased learning may lead to more learner-oriented teaching since teachers become more accurate in diagnostics and more flexible in managing the learning process. 18 Due to its complex concept, conversely, the ICM variant outlined above offers yet another mechanism to face the problem of heterogeneity. By implementing a learning route, there is no need for learners to simultaneously arrive at a certain degree of proficiency since learning is organized as a process which is open to various approaches, paces, and methods. Moreover, process-oriented tasks allow a higher degree of learner activation as soon as pupils are assigned a sufficient amount of self-responsibility for both their own success in learning as well as the success of others. For the sake of the quality of education, the underlying concept of this ICM variation enhances the potential of learner activation by ridding inclass activities of lengthy descriptions and explanations of content that can also be acquired in personal responsibility. Up to this point in the teaching unit, the provisional results seem to be promising. Learners who are involved in the project lay unequivocal emphasis on the fact that they enjoy preparing material and exercises for their classmates. In addition, they stress that the variety of sub-tasks as well as the early and regular self-tests which they are about to complete play an important part in contributing to maintain both concentration and motivation. This may serve as an explanation as to why there have been no discipline problems up to now. Another positive side effect which can be observed is the increasing amount of class time during which the learners are busy applying the target language. To conclude, these observations justifiably foster the hope of establishing a setting which enables pupils to cooperatively revisit language problems, to practise selected skills, and to adequately implement them in various contexts.

_________________ 18

Demuth/Meyer, 2010: 17: “Durch Kompetenzorientierung kann der Unterricht schülerorientierter gestaltet werden, weil die Lehrerin sicherer im Diagnostizieren und flexibler in der Prozesssteuerung wird.”

170

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Index abstraction 24 Active Auditorium 30, 89, 95, 114, 118, 123 assessment 40, 131, 143

− −

e-assessment 78 formal assessment 126 formative assessment 8, 16, 18, 20, 121, 124, 131, 144, 167 self-assessment 8 self-learning assessment 40

−

model assignment 26

− − −

assignment 26, 29, 129

audience response system 121, 127, 128 audio mixer 71 bell curve 137 blended learning 5, 10, 36, 40 Bloom’s Taxonomy 82, 138, 141 bulimia pedagogy 45 case study 47 chat 8 class requirement 62 clicker 122 collaboration 66, 104 collaborative editing 50 collaborative instruction 5 communication 5, 137 −

online communication 8

− − − −

content acquisition 15 content delivery 15, 60, 63, 97 content presentation 69 content production 45, 46

communicative competence 159 competence 35, 156 conditioning 138 constructivism 4 content 55

contribution 97 cooperation 49, 104, 110, 145

copyright 70, 95, 97, 151 Coursera 10 Creative Commons 148 creativity 32, 103 data 163 digital media 150 discussion 3, 6, 40, 46, 116, 126, 129 diversity 104 documentation 49 e-book 49 editing 72, 90 education 3, 24, 140, 162 educational system 24, 155 edX 10 engineering 24 error analysis 79 evaluation 60, 107, 110, 148, 163 −

evaluation form 40, 164

− − −

electronic tests 17, 19 marks 54 oral exam 25, 47

−

self-monitoring exercise 152

exam 9, 17, 20, 36, 40

exercise 103, 107

experiment 4, 129 feedback 23, 30, 32, 121, 123, 125, 132, 144, 148, 153, 167 flanking effects 74 Flipped Classroom 93, 149, 151 forum 8, 19, 39 funding 96 grading 4, 131, 143 group presentation 47 group work 29, 36, 37, 97, 104, 164 hardware 71, 123 Hawthorne effect 4 high school 96, 125, 135, 147 HTML 50

184

Index

ILIAS 27, 85 incentive systems 78 in-class activities 28, 66, 113, 114, 130, 166 in-class session 10, 15, 36, 37, 60, 62, 66, 89, 103, 121, 127, 165 industry 24 information technology 32 infrastructure 46, 96 innovation 46 input orientation 155 instructor-directed instruction 5 interactive 123 Interactive Whiteboard 64, 71, 80, 85 interview 37, 38 Inverted Classroom Model − − − − − − − − − − − −

ICM+ 45 implementation 3, 27, 35, 37, 90, 148 in applied sciences 23, 35 in computer science 45 in language teaching 155 in linguistics 17, 77, 103 in mathematics 114 in natural sciences 137 in social sciences 147 Inverted² Classroom 30 objectives 27 Shuffled Classroom 30

iterative testing 17 John Hattie 16, 31, 59, 64 just-in-time teaching 9 key competences 37, 40 knowledge gap 132 knowledge management 103 language proficiency 157 learner activation 155 learner type 41 learner-centred 133, 149, 155, 161 learning − − − − − − − −

collaborative learning 113 discovery learning 8 inquiry-based learning 141, 152, 153 learning by doing 36 learning by teaching 89, 97, 115, 149 learning effects 15 learning outcomes 4, 126 learning process 24, 31, 111

− − − − − − − − −

learning progress 165 learning stations 105, 108, 113 lifelong learning 108 online learning 5, 15 problem-based learning 24, 30, 104 product-oriented learning 158 project-based learning 141, 142 self-directed learning 46, 144 self-guided learning 16, 24

− − − − − − − − −

e-lecture 83, 84 face-to-face lecture 9 lecture game 29, 89, 117 lecture recording 3, 7, 85, 95 student lecture 46 traditional lecture 45 video lecture 28 web-based lecture 3 wiki lecture 47, 51

− −

−

Flipped-Mastery Classroom 9 Inverted Classroom Mastery Model 15, 17, 66, 131 mastery learning 141, 142

−

MOOC-wrapping 10

−

multimedia design 7

learning management system 27, 36, 50 learning material 26, 37, 49, 63, 96, 97, 105, 110, 127, 150, 159, 165 lecture 30, 46, 86, 123

Lernen durch Lehren 97 mastery 9, 16, 19, 139

microphone 27, 71, 85, 90 micro-teaching 65 mobile device 62 model solution 65, 83 MOOC 7, 10, 15, 19, 74, 123

Moodle 37, 39, 85 motivation 17, 30, 160 multimedia 63, 69, 74, 104, 165 networking 49 online conference 36 online phase 40 online repository 94 online simulation 8 Peer Instruction 9, 29, 123, 124, 129 plenary session 46, 47 preparation 40, 45, 115, 121, 125, 127, 151

185

Index presentation 47, 49, 63, 83, 87, 95, 115, 122, 152, 158 proximal development 158 publication bias 4 quality assurance 46, 67 quantity assurance 60 questions 9, 29, 40, 122 − −

clicker questions 124, 126 multiple-choice questions 29, 123, 124

− − − −

methodological skills 107, 110 presentation skills 32, 35, 107 social skills 32, 56, 107 soft skills 35

quiz 5, 8, 9, 18, 105, 124, 131 role-play 40 Salman Khan 7 screencast 27, 37, 39, 78, 83, 87, 139 script 88 Second Life 95 self-explanation 5 session plan 118 skills 25, 107, 141, 164, 169

smartphone 106, 122, 123 social network 72, 127 software 4, 27, 71, 83, 85, 88, 121 solutions 26, 29, 30, 40, 108 studio 84 tablet 27, 85, 122, 123 task 39, 79, 108 − − − − − −

listening task 105 online task 36 process-oriented task 169 scaffolding task 158 situative task 158 transfer-task 106

teacher-centred 30, 91, 111, 125 teaching method 11, 94, 97, 104 Think – Pair – Share 89, 114, 123 time management 144 topic map 52 touch screen 71

traditional classroom 138 traditional teaching 15 transparency 152, 158 Tutor of the Day 89, 103, 104 tutoring 6 Udacity 7, 10 video 6, 27, 38, 59, 77, 91, 93, 105, 113, 129, 139, 153 − − − − − − − − − − − − − − −

content-delivery videos 60, 63 educational value 78 educational videos 11 in-class suggestions 66 integrating video 61 Khan-style videos 7 learner videos 149 online videos 5, 9 platform 79, 94, 97 preliminary videos 60, 62 presentational videos 70 production 7, 59, 69, 95, 147, 148, 151 recording 84, 86, 95 video access 72 video types 5, 61, 83, 88

− − − − − − − −

Breadcrumb Navigation 53 content 49 in higher education 50 MediaWiki 50, 96 outcomes 54 quality control 51 wiki documentation 47 wiki software 50

Virtual Linguistics Campus 17, 59, 72 visualization 106 wiki 45, 49

Wikipedia 49, 95, 96 workload 41 worksheet 41 workshop 36, 47 YouTube 7, 27, 59, 64, 67, 72, 80, 85, 95, 148