The trouble with the flipped classroom metaphor is its focus on the classroom. The idea that students learn things before class and use the class to clarify, extend and make connections through social encounters is, I think, very appropriate. But the approach seems to position the “pre-work” as… well, “pre-work” rather than core work. It is work to be done to make the class more effective. I would like classroom sessions to be events that make the rest of the students’ work (that which happens before and after) more effective (e.g. by binding ideas together, motivating further exploration and engagement, collaboratively working through stumbling blocks).
I see education as fundamentally asynchronous. Most of a student’s work is done outside of synchronous events. Education doesn’t happen in discrete, scheduled 2-hour periods but is stretched across weeks, months and years. For me, synchronous events (e.g. the “classroom” stuff) simply punctuate these longer journeys of asynchronous and, often, informal or non-designed learning activity.
Learning outcomes, if we have to use them, are better seen as longer-term goals that are achieved over a mix of asynchronous and synchronous learning activity.
From this view, synchronous events can bring a focus to that asynchronous activity, but they should also encourage and help make connections between rich learning that happens before and after. This, however, probably involves teachers taking a greater interest in what happens outside of their scheduled sessions and loosening their control over what happens within them. It troubles the commonly-held belief that we should define learning outcomes at the start of a session and check them at the end. Learning outcomes, if we have to use them, are better seen as longer-term goals that are achieved over a mix of asynchronous and synchronous learning activity. The good news is that this approach lowers the stakes of synchronous events since the aim is not to get through pre-set content or tasks. Content and tasks simply continue, preferably supported by asynchronous communication and collaboration. This allows riskier and more inclusive approaches within the synchronous, “classroom” activities.
There is more to be said here about embracing uncertainty, and designing and orchestrating across synchronous and asynchronous activity, but I will leave that for another post.
Further reading and resources
- Fawns, T. (2022). TESS Virtual Week Session 2: Entangled Pedagogy and Hybrid Design (video). https://youtu.be/svYEFWSyBLk?feature=shared.
- Fawns, T. (2019). Postdigital education in design and practice. Postdigital Science and Education, 1(1), 132–145. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-018-0021-8.
- Goodyear, P. (2015). Teaching as design. HERDSA Review of Higher Education, 2, 27-50.
- Sun, S. Y. H., & Goodyear, P. (2020). Social co-configuration in online language learning. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 36(2), 13–26. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.5102.