Resistance to the inverted classroom can show up anywhere

February 6, 2012, 2:52 pm

This past Saturday I was paired with one of our faculty from the College of Nursing to interview several prospective students for academic scholarships. In between interviews, we had a great conversation about the inverted classroom. It turns out that the College of Nursing is implementing an inverted model in some of their classes, although they don’t know it by that name and are not trying to jump on an educational bandwagon. They are taking some of their courses, putting the “theory” (as it was called) online as audio files accompanied by sets of notes, and then using the class time for practica, labs, and discussion. When I described what I’ve written about here on the inverted classroom, my colleague readily agreed it was the same idea.

This makes a lot of sense in the health sciences because as a practitioner, theory and raw information are important, but it’s the practice itself that really matters. (Just ask my wife, who is now successfully sticking people with needles on a regular basis.) If I were sick, I would certainly feel a lot more comfortable having a nurse who’d spent his or her class time practicing being a nurse with the active guidance of an expert nurse than I would someone who’d sat through a bunch of lectures by a nurse, even if they were great lectures. As my colleague put it, nurses have to be out-of-the-box thinkers who can adapt quickly to rapidly-changing and complex situations. I’d add that the best nurses do this with unfailing professionalism and empathy. Can you possibly learn this in a lecture?

As obvious as this seems, what my colleague mentioned next was interesting too: they are getting from some students the same kind of resistance I received when teaching the inverted MATLAB course. Many students simply want to be lectured to. When I taught the MATLAB course inverted, all of the students were initially uncomfortable with the course design, some vocally so. I invited them to come in individually to discuss it, and I asked them: What would you gain from regular in-class lectures that you are not getting from the screencasts and lab activities now? Unfailingly, the objections ultimately boiled down to: I just feel better when lectured to, even when they themselves could point out the educational advantages of a more active class. My colleague readily agreed the same thing was going on with that (small!) subset of nursing students.

My MATLAB students were fundamentally good students, and so are all of our nursing students now, so this isn’t about “good” or “bad” students. What I think this illustrates is that there is a cultural expectation about how college classes ought to go that is very hard to change. Many students — and faculty! — in higher education are sold on what I called the renters’ model, which is basically transactional. I pay my money and inhabit this space while you take care of my needs, and when I’m done I’ll move on. The inverted classroom is one style of teaching that insists on ownership. There will be some friction when two fundamental conceptions of class time are in such disagreement with each other, no matter how much sense it might make in your content area.

For those who have encountered this kind of resistance, whether it’s from the inverted classroom or some other style of course design and teaching, how did it go for you and your students?

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrysti/

This entry was posted in Education, Inverted classroom, Student culture, Teaching and tagged Active learning, Inverted classroom, Student culture. Bookmark the permalink.

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amcdawes

I hear a lot about the pushback and have run into it from a very small number of students in my own classes. I benefit from two situations: 1) the largest course that uses these techniques was taught that way (“inverted” if you will) before I came along so the culture was already established. 2) For other courses where I have adopted inversion techniques, the students have likely taken a course from another faculty member that used them as well. Our intro physics course uses a curriculum that expects a lot of active engagement from the students. This sets the stage and gives us a lot more leeway to use similar techniques in upper-division courses. No one gets weirded out when we ask them to watch a video lecture, pre-read their textbook, answer web warmup questions (JiTT), or grab a whiteboard for in-class problem solving. I owe my department for this luxury… it sure is nice to skip right to the learning and not explain every day why I won’t “just lecture”.
leah_shopkow

I’ve also experienced some pushback, but also greater enthusiasm from some students. The enthusiasm outweighs the pushback. Our CITL interviewed students from my class after the class, and only one student (a very strong student, by the way) was unhappy, and even that student acknowledged that he learned a lot. From students used to business as usual, however, there is pushback about the greater effort required to own the class. JiTTs and homeworks (where I check understanding) hold students accountable for the preparation and they simply aren’t held accountable in all of their classes. We’ve also seen a bimodal grade distribution. Students who get with the program really do well and grow in confidence (including many under-prepared students), while students who don’t probably get a lower grade than they might otherwise have gotten. I don’t say that they do less well, because the students who drift through classes probably weren’t learning much of anything anyway in their other classes, but the grades do reflect that non-learning in my class. I try to minimize the pushback by beginning each class with a “you’ll probably like this class if…” and “you probably won’t like this class if you prefer to hear lectures” and most of those who want to listen leave early with no hard feelings on either side.
http://stevenlberg.wordpress.com/ Steven L. Berg

Three points concerning resistance:

First, because I am getting a reputation, a larger contingent of students take a class because I am teaching it. Also, students who desire the lecture format don’t enroll in my sections. Academic counselors steer students toward or away from my sections. Having a group of students in the class who want what I have to offer helps.

Second, I have started sending welcoming e-mail messages to students much earlier than I have done in the past—sometimes more than a month before the new class is scheduled to begin. This begins building the expectation for the course even before the first day. It also allows students who might want the lecture format the option of finding another section that would better meet their desires.

Finally, beginning on the first day of class, I address the “unusual” nature of the course and discuss student concerns. This helps lessen the fear of the unknown that can be a source of student discomfort.

Steven L. Berg
http://stevenlberg.wordpress.com/

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines Robert Talbert

Good points. One thing about my MATLAB course though- it was taught at a small liberal arts college (not my current institution) where there was only one section a year of it taught. So the argument of “students who want lecture don’t enroll in my courses” didn’t work, and doesn’t work for anybody in a similar situation (= small institutions where there are just not a lot of, or any, choices of different sections for students). Instructors in that situation have to work extra hard in the P.R. department.

tardigrade

Not P.R., accommodations (such as making sure office hours are available, that the students know where the resource centers are).
http://stevenlberg.wordpress.com/ Steven L. Berg

I, too, teach at a relatively small institution. However, in most cases, there are multiple sections of the classes I teach and/or students could take a similar class to meet a requirement (e.g. ancient world instead of early modern world history). But, this semester I am teaching the only on-campus film class. However, given its nature, the film course is the most traditional one I teach so my style is less problematic for students who want a lecture course.

rbreil01

I’m using more online resources in my music theory classes, but unfortuntely many lack discipline to be prepare for class.
jl04282012

While I do not teach at the post-secondary level, I do teach at a small private school that is just beginning to be open to different instructional methods. Last year I taught eight grade history and tried what you refer to as the inverted model. I wanted discussion and inquiry and even debate. Perhaps eighth grade was too young to expect that. Perhaps the students were too used to more traditional instructional methods.
Whichever was the case, it was a very tough year and I had incredible kickback from both students and parents (the joys of teaching the youngun’s). I had several parent conferences that essentially consisted of parents complaining that I wasn’t spoon-feeding their children. All they wanted was for me to give their kids the questions AND the answers to the questions that were going to be on the test so that they could memorize them. THAT’s what they considered “learning.”
This year a different teacher is teaching eighth grade history. He is lecturing and giving them test “reviews” that have the exact question and correct answer that will be on the test. . .
dnewton137

I suspect one reason why some students “just feel better when lectured to” is that a lecture is like a spectator sport, whose demands on the spectator can range from intense to nothing, The level of engagement is mostly under the control of the student. In an “inverted” class the student is compelled to get on the field and grapple with questions and concepts along with the instructor and other students. That can be uncomfortable, but usually results in better learning.
v8573254

Maybe some of you know how it is when one begins to talk – lecture – and all at once, 20 minutes have disappeared. Occasionally when I caught this behavior, I told students I was sorry I’d taken up their time talking. Always, at least one student said, “But, I like lectures.” Followed by nods.
It is easier to let information wash over one.
3rdtyrant

I’m just not sure how we ever got away from the lab experience, or the theory-testing experience–either in class our out. In the Humanities, where we don’t really have people to stick with needles, we use texts, art, etc. to foment student involvement in the testing of theoretical ideas in order to train them in critical thinking and problem solving.

I don’t agree that some new classroom model is necessary, but rather that higher expectations from both teachers and students will solve whatever dilemma has everyone so hastily scrambling to find some new answer. The so-called inverted classroom is simply a return to an ideal proving ground for ideas–a tactic used in the past and still used by effective teachers, and a tactic that is one of a number that exist at the disposal of an intelligent, trained, and academically prepared teacher.

As always, the answer is rarely a new program, but rather in improvement in the efforts of the individuals involved.
vlghess

Student resistance–better, resistance of some/many students–to active learning goes back beyond the “inverted classroom” approach. When I started experimenting with more active learning approaches in my Gen Chem at what was then a relatively small school (i.e. maybe 35 in the class) I got push-back (read not wonderful evals.) I think it was “pre-med syndrome”–class was high stakes and students were terrified to be wrong, even when it was as safe as I could make it. On top of that, freshmen are often, developmentally, dualistic–they want to be SURE of The Right Answer.
They weren’t lazy students, necessarily, if by lazy we mean unwilling to work. And I’m not sure I’d say mentally lazy either–not for all of them–so much as scared.

austinbarry

That’s a problem with high stakes classes. My school used first year Chemistry to weed out pre-meds and improve their med-school acceptance figures, and intense inter-student competition doesn’t really make a good learning environment. Perhaps designating some classes as required tutorial/study/lab sessions might make students more comfortable. The content would be as you intended, but the emphasis would be on learning rather than competition.
rsgassle

I don’t understand the discussions here about inverted classrooms in the natural sciences. In my day, the physics, chemistry, and biology classes had lectures and labs. Sounds to me like they were both conventional (lecture) and inverted (lab).

wlgoffe

To deal with student resistance, I show them data that it leads to greater learning (see Figure 1 in “Improved Learning in a Large Enrollment Physics Class” http://http://www.cwsei.ubc.ca/SEI_research/index.html ). I also explicitly say that the clicker questions that they see in class are like what they’ll see on exams, so every day they get a gift — practice what they’ll see on exams. I suspect that the 2nd point is more effective. I wished that I’d thought of it, but I got it from suggestion from physicists. As best I know, they’ve done the most to improve college instruction in their discipline. The above is one example, and “Don’t Lecture Me” http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/lectures/ is an excellent non-academic intro. Their main site is http://www.compadre.org/per/ . Finally, I wish that the Chronicle wouldn’t wouldn’t use DISQUS as it requires one to turn on third party cookies (that’s what the “Warning: A browser setting is preventing you from logging in. Fix this setting to log in” message is about if you have them turned off). Of course, 3rd party cookies are used to track us across websites.

tardigrade

“(see Figure 1 in “Improved Learning in a Large Enrollment Physics Class”"

That is a study without acceptable controls, and which references in support*** (see reference S4) at least one study which explicitly claims it does not apply to situations such as this study.

Acceptable controls:

1) UBC has both conventional and inverted intro Physics courses. They should have converted an inverted course to conventional for one week as a control.

2) There was no individual student analysis. They have access both within course, and within the transcripts, to how well students were doing in the course and more generally. Many of the students would have been taking other science courses with other students in the study group. That allows for a degree of inter-cohort control beyond the one study course.

*** – If you’re going to claim the Hawthorne effect does not apply because, in part, the lives of the students are so busy and complex, you also have to explain why the lives of the Hawthorne subjects were so easy-going and simple.

http://www.facebook.com/condottiero Guillermo Pineda

How to incentivate the student’s discipline so he can be effectively prepared for class is important to me. Some of them, sadly, don not have a clue of why they are studying X or Y degree and just go to study because that is which is demanded from them by parents, culture and society.
lmf3b

I could see how this “inverted classroom” model could work well, done right. However, I am also cynical enough to think some of the enthusiasm comes from this: Once developed, it is relatively easy to take the screencasts, slap them up on Blackboard and have yourself a “online course” without all the pesky the labs/discussion/class activities.
How long before penny-counting administrators decide that expensive and time-consuming in-class portion is not really the most important part after all. After all, what the students need to pass the tests is all in the videos…

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines Robert Talbert

That could certainly happen. In fact I think I’ve heard of this very thing happening in a high school district somewhere (Florida? Anybody remember the news item I am thinking of?). The slope toward this situation begins when people mistakenly characterize the inverted classroom as “watch the lectures online and do homework in class”. It’s way more than that. And I’d say that if you are running what you think is an inverted classroom and students aren’t complaining about how hard they’re working, then on some level you’re doing it wrong.
austinbarry

I can’t imagine a science class without a lab, or a philosophy class without a discussion, or a language class in which students didn’t do most of the talking. Hopefully more enlightened administrators will realize that the “pesky labs/discussions/class activities” are what differentiate their expensive product from something that is available for little or no cost on the internet.

jblackmcc

First I’d like to address a question you asked earlier in your article: ”Can you possibly learn this in a lecture?”

My answer: Yes

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of what you call the inverted method. I’ve been using it since I entered the profession in 1980 (yep, even without computers). I first started presenting papers and workshops about it in 1983 (although that’s not what we called it then).

But that doesn’t mean faculty who don’t use it (I’ll bet that includes most of your professors) don’t/didn’t create ecosystems that, as you put it, create classes that help students ”adapt quickly to rapidly-changing and complex situations . . . with unfailing professionalism and empathy.”

After all, students have been learning those skills since long before the inverted method came along, eh?

The problem is falsely set up as dull lecture vs. engaging inverted method. But I’ve been in lectures so life-changing that I simply wasn’t the same person when I left as the one who’d entered the room 55 minutes earlier, and I’ve been in “inverted” learning situations that were so unengaging and simplistic that I seriously wanted to demand my money back.

A good lecture is by its very nature interactive: My brain must be involved to listen well, follow along, make the connections being enticed from me, see the angles–and if I’m a student, figure out what needs to be written down and starred for later reference, what’s just a joke for a bit of a commercial break, and what needs a box around it with a question mark so I remember to ask, research, or practice with that bit more. A good lecture is a participatory sport, even if no one is talking but the lecturer.

So perhaps when students are resistant, it’s because they have been in good lectures–or bad inverted situations. I honestly see resistance on their part to be a good thing: Do we really want our students to be sheepishly following no matter what we do? Why not question when something different comes along, especially in a situation with such high odds as learning x material for state boards in, say, nursing?

I guess that’s my answer to your last question: I welcome resistance. I want to hear about it, understand why they have it, and use it to talk about the concepts and skills in my classes. I hope they continue to be resistant–until they’re given good reasons not to be.

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines Robert Talbert

I’m totally in agreement with the notion that “active” approaches to learning can be totally uninspiring, and lectures can be very inspiring. But I’d point out that inspiration is not the same as learning. When we think we’ve learned from a lecture, what’s really happened is that the lecture has inspired us to **go do something** that then creates learning.

The idea is that the inverted classroom, when done right, is nothing if not opportunities for students to do something that is challenging and interesting. But a lecture, done right, need not contain any such opportunity. If a person by his or her nature creates such opportunities then fine, but I don’t know if a good lecture by definition is interactive.

jung_gt

When I inverted my freshman bio class last semester, the first (vocal) reaction was resistance (I blogged about it here: http://jchoigt.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/taking-some-lumps-in-the-no-lecture-model/). One of the reasons cited for the resistance was that viewing the videos was extra work and time, an additional 2-3 hours per week. My student evals at the end of the semester was significantly lower than previously; student comments were polarized, with many liking the inverted model, but many still resenting it.

http://stevenlberg.wordpress.com/ Steven L. Berg

For me, the URL cited above is picking up the “)” which is part of the comment; not the link. If others are having this problem use:

http://jchoigt.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/taking-some-lumps-in-the-no-lecture-model/

vicden1

I started doing this not long after I started using a website to provide information. My students would complain that we did not have time to do the rather complex labs required, and none of us were thrilled with being at the college until 10 pm or later (night class 6-9p), so I put up the PowerPoint outline for the lectures I would normally give, links to the online reading assignments, websites from other similar classes at different institutions, etc.
I had a class of largely adult students (avg age about 40-45) who were motivated to learn, and would rather do the “book work”as they called it elsewhere, and just do the labs in class with me there to help, than the opposite, with them finding time to do labs juggling work and other obligations, and then sit and listen to me lecture.
afb123

The University of Phoenix uses this model, including elements of Malcolm Knowles’s andragogical learning model exclusively, without exception, in all classes. Students become highly engaged; the tactile nature facilitates learning. The ones who don’t like it prefer to be on their Facebook account rather than active in the class, and this model makes that more difficult.
pippi

After teaching completely online for two years, though, I’m wondering how an online course can be flipped for a little variety. Discussion forums are not as lively as one might envision and I try everything I possibly can to make sure I am not doing all the work in the course, pouring information into students’ hard drives to be reconfigured and returned as essays–wikis, blogs, student-created videos, Facebook pages, digital storytelling projects, group projects. Still, I long for just one synchronous f2f discussion where we have to look at each other and struggle to think on our feet and deal with ideas on the spot.
jkirkpa380

Years ago a dean who was interviewing me commented that the lecture has been obsolete since the invention of the printing press. Today, “you can get it in the book” (or online) is the usual refrain. But there are reasons why the lecture has not died out in 500 years. We speak at about half the rate at which most of us read. As a result, a well-crafted lecture must essentialize what’s in the book(s). This essentialization in turn gives students categories into which to put the detail of the written material. A good lecture can be highly motivating. (A bad one, to be sure, can be deadly.) When I was a student, I couldn’t decide whether I should read the book before or after the lecture. I concluded that both was the proper routine. I don’t have many good memories of inverted classes, but I do vividly remember the couple of outstanding lecturers that I had. And I still remember much of the material they presented, many years after the final exam! Application, practicum, apprenticeship, of course, are required, but only after the basics have been acquired and digested.

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines Robert Talbert

Right, but that doesn’t mean the lecture has to take place *in class*. That’s the gist of the inverted model.

tonykuphaldt

I really like your “renter” versus “homeowner” metaphors for students’ assumptions regarding their own education. The reason I began inverting my classroom in 2002 was to address a request by an industry advisor (a potential employer of my graduates) that students need to “learn how to learn” while in college, and it was clear my method of teaching (lecture) was not accomplishing that goal. My students needed to take personal ownership of their learning, and lecture was impeding that necessary development.

This, I think, is the really provocative element of inverted classrooms: it’s not just a “better mousetrap” for teaching content; it’s really all about “catching better mice”. A goal that lecture simply will never accomplish is teaching students how to identify and use resources for learning on their own, how to digest complex concepts without the benefit of an expert leading them by the hand, etc. Personal ownership of the learning process is the key here.
professor01

How does the inverted or flipped classroom overcome the age-old problem of students not doing the work (e.g., readings) before coming to class?

ordinary_man

Assign them HW which is collected and graded. I use automatic grading!
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines Robert Talbert

By building in out-of-class assignments that develop students’ abilities to get something out of what they are viewing/reading and which are essential for good performance in the in-class portion of the course. I call mine “Guided Practice”. Here’s an earlier blog post that spells some of this out:
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2011/01/14/how-it-all-works-in-the-matlab-course/

tardigrade

“What would you gain from regular in-class lectures that you are not getting from the screencasts and lab activities now?”

1) Spontaneity in interaction about lecture content from and with the instructor.

2) Freedom from mandated groupwork.

3) Freedom from unrealistically time-pressured “forced to perform” work. I need time to reflect during the learning process; I also need time to follow tangential ideas. Being forced to work at a certain pace, or prematurely terminating the activity due to arbitrary demands of another class meeting after us creates serious havoc in this process.

This written, I greatly enjoyed the half-and-half approach taken in the intro physics course at my current school. I also greatly enjoyed that while we took time to solve problems, we had the choice of whether to solve them in groups or individually.

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines Robert Talbert

Students can get (1) from office hours and during the in-class portion of the meetings.

Developing the capacity to work within groups is an essential skill for the workplace, and I would argue a great facilitator in learning. So “freedom” from group work might be more of a negative than a positive. That said, students who dig in their heels about working in groups could still be allowed to work alone in the in-class portion.

As for (3), you set up the in-class portion so that it is doable within the time frame given without crushing time pressures and then set a deadline for a final submission to something like 2 days later. So students are incentivized to get work done in class but it’s not necessary.

tardigrade

“Developing the capacity to work within groups is an essential skill for the workplace”

That’s what they say. I don’t know whether this is wrong, or whether I just have an easier time working with others (as a technician) in the workplace than doing so at school.

One nice thing that work has that school-based peer group work doesn’t have is that people are segregated by overt job titles/duties and skill sets at work, when this is far more amorphous in a school setting.

One of the other really nice things about working as a technician is that I’m often assigned parts of the job (that people usually know I can do well, or are willing to allowing me to learn from), and then allowed to do that job as I think best. To the extent these sorts of assignments occur in school the assignments seem to be more haphazard.