7/16/2014 The Flipped, Flipped Classroom | Stanford Daily

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The Flipped, Flipped ClassroomBy: Op Ed August 5, 2013 6 Comments

The past years have witnessed the apparition of one of the largest educational revolutions of our time:many prognosticators trumpet how MOOCs and flipped classroom models are one of the mostpromising educational approaches of the last century. From every walk of life, individuals ranging frompoliticians to teachers to venture capitalists seem to be thrilled by the new doors opened by thoseinnovations.

Paradoxically, those so-called “innovations” are incorporating none of the educational research producedover the past decades.

Educational researchers and National Academy Reports have argued for years that students aren’t simplyvessels waiting to be filled with knowledge. Students construct their view of the world using their priorknowledge, they actively integrate new information with their existing cognitive structures and they thinkcritically about the content taught when given opportunities to do so.

In numerous controlled and rigorous experiments, educational researchers have described how “tell-and-practice” classroom instructions are well-suited for supporting memorization of facts and proceduresbut prevent students from developing critical thinking and transferring their knowledge to new situations.MOOCs and flipped classrooms are merely recreating the same pedagogical structure withoutquestioning the scientific validity of this model.

The alternative is to put the “practice” in front of the “tell”. Learning scientists call this movement

“Constructivism” because it emphasizes the fact that students build new knowledge in ways integratedwith their existing cognitive structures.

This approach is notoriously difficult to implement. This is not about throwing students in a room andletting them figure things out by themselves. It takes time to carefully engineer good exploratory activities

for learners. The pay-off, however, is worth the effort. According to educational researchers, studentsdevelop higher critical thinking skills and have a better conceptual understanding of an idea when theycan explore a domain first and then follow a more standard kind of instruction (such as attending alecture, watching a video, or reading a textbook chapter).

Our lab at Stanford supports this approach by developing technology-enhanced manipulatives and

creating spaces in K-12 schools for creative exploration of science and engineering disciplines. We build“tangible interfaces” (i.e., physical objects augmented with virtual information) that support students’explorations of a domain. Think of this approach like Lego kits on steroids, augmented with digitalinformation that can be projected on them.

One of these systems, BrainExplorer, is an interactive tabletop learning environment that simulates howthe human brain processes visual images. It features polymer reproductions of different regions of thebrain and two eyeballs, spread across the interactive surface of the table and networked by infrared lightand cameras. Students then use an infrared pen to manipulate and explore the neural network. Bysevering and reconfiguring the connections, students can see how perceptions of the visual field aretransformed.

In a controlled study conducted in our lab, we found that, compared to traditional text learning,

performance increased significantly with the use of these tangible, interactive tools. We found a 25 percentincrease in performance when open-ended exploration came before text study rather than after it. Ourresults show that the participants who used BrainExplorer better remembered the terminology of the

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domain, scored higher on conceptual questions and were better able to transfer their understanding ofthe brain to new situations.

In addition to these published findings, we have been presenting follow-up studies at various academicconferences in which we use video instead of text and test different content topics other thanneuroscience, such as mathematics and science. The results are always the same. The study buttresseswhat many educational researchers and cognitive scientists have been asserting for many years: the“exploration first” model is a better way to learn. You cannot have the answers before you think of thequestions.

These findings flip the “flipped classroom” model – in which students first watch videos or read and thendo projects in the classroom – on its head. Our results suggest both that students are better prepared tounderstand and appreciate the elegance of a theory or a principle when exploring the domain bythemselves first and that new technologies, tangible toolkits and interfaces, in particular, are especiallywell-suited for that purpose.

With this series of studies, we are showing that research in education is useful and important becausesometimes our intuitions about ‘what works’ are simply dead wrong. The flipped classroom goes in theright direction: we need less lecturing and more exploration. However, by failing to pay attention to theresearch, we were applying what is possibly a good idea in the wrong way. That’s why research ineducation is crucially important to improve our schools. Intuitions are good, but science is better.

- Bertrand Schneider, Paulo Blikstein, Roy Pea

Bertrand Schneider is a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Education and a master’s student incomputer science.

Paulo Blikstein is an assistant professor of education and, by courtesy, of computer science.

Roy Pea is a professor of education and, by courtesy, of computer science.

Tagged with: EDUCATION FLIPPED CLASSROOM INNOVATION MOOC TECHNOLOGY

—Tim Borgerson

Unlike a debt, gratefulness isn’tbeholden to any particular institution –whether it be a person, school or state.Therefore, for my Senior Gift, I donatedto the CCSF scholarship fund. Itsstudents deserve it more than we do.

That’s what we said

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Reality Check • 11 months ago

> Paradoxically, those so-called “innovations” are incorporating none of the

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7/16/2014 The Flipped, Flipped Classroom | Stanford Daily

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> educational research produced over the past decades.

And that just may be the reason why. What works in real life and what people actuallywant is not the same as that conjured up in the ivory tower of ideal model students.

> Educational researchers and National Academy Reports have argued for years> that students aren’t simply vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge.> Students construct their view of the world using their prior knowledge,> they actively integrate new information with their existing cognitive> structures and they think critically about the content taught when given> opportunities to do so.

Right. Educational researchers and the National Academy have been bastions of the leftfor years too — no wonder that their output is full of self-enabling, politically correct feel-good stuff. Sorry, but in the real world the idea that students will figure out the solutionsthemselves is a fantasy. Research is hard. Discovery is slow. Most students do not havethe time and many do not have the talent to succeed without direction.

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internet know-nothing • a year ago

I have always felt (I know that 'felt' is substantially less rigorous than performing andanalyzing studies) that often we don't need technology or anything fancy to improvelearning. Just teach kids how to study: 1. Read the chapter before class, and do someassigned review exercises. 2. Go to class, listen, and ask questions. 3. Go home andreread the chapter and do the hard and synthesis exercises. 4. Seek help for whateveryou can't do at office hours.

Indeed, here I want to go on a slight tangent and argue (again, without any specializedknowledge or experience; I'm just flapping my fingers here) that the idea that we needexpensive electronic, device-oriented (e.g., electronic tables and "Legos kits on steroids")learning environments to support effective learning is profoundly pessimistic. That wouldsuggest that students in resource-rich environments will increase their knowledge gapover those in resource-poor environments at a time when we need that gap to decrease(by lifting the bottom up, of course). I don't believe it. I think reading decent textbooks(even if they are decades old), solving problems, and learning from those who havemastered a subject, combined with a student's desire to learn and strong willingness towork, are all that is needed, and these latter resources are far more widely available thanare specialized electronic ones.

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Ellie K • 11 months ago internet know-nothing

IMHO, YOU are correct! Thomas's "Calculus" hasn't changed since 1978. Calculushasn't changed (it pre-dated Thomas ;o) It is absurd to suggest that acustomized, probably over-priced Microsoft Surface be used to teachkindergarten through 12th grade students about neuroscience. That's what thisarticle emphasized. Mathematics and science were acknowledged, as anafterthought. After Jonah Lehrer's neuroscience deception, I suspect thatneurologists, psychiatrists and brain surgeons are the only genuineneuroscientists!

For the authors of this post: You (three) shouldn't waste your valuable time withStanford's department of computer science "by courtesy". You are bona fideprofessors (and a doctoral student) in the department of education! Youcontribute much more than the plethora of mobile payment start-up's and socialmedia tools that are Stanford CS's recent output e.g. Clinkle. Your expertise aseducators is important, especially now. I truly wish society and capital marketsvalued you more highly, in status and compensation.

Larry Snyder • 11 months ago

I want to believe that the principal researchers will find it in their hearts to take the "flipped,flipped classroom" model in new directions, giving due attention to the plight of the ruralpoor and inner-city youth as well. Each advance in educational technology challenges the"old school" educational research community to cross disciplinary lines, to workcollaboratively, to align itself with inclusive, data-driven approaches to personalized

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7/16/2014 The Flipped, Flipped Classroom | Stanford Daily

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collaboratively, to align itself with inclusive, data-driven approaches to personalizedlearning, gametization, and embedded remedial education.

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edward m lenert • 11 months ago

Nice essay. But ... I'll go with, "Science is better when you can measure."

It is very difficult to measure 'learning' ... and 'science' in the sense of rigorousquantification of inputs and outputs is not always the best way to assess constructivistlearning.

know nothing too • a year ago

Why Flipped, Flipped Classroom ?

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