Ask HN: Experience with Flipped/Inverted Classroom?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21093108

by AnimalMuppet • 7 years ago

6 4 7 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Does anyone have experience with a flipped or inverted classroom (that is, content delivered online, outside the classroom, homework and activities inside the classroom)? Especially, does anyone have experience with this and also with traditional approaches?

Did it work for you? Did you learn better that way? Did you find the classroom time to be more of a waste in the inverted system?

jimmyvalmer2• 7 years ago

Inverted or not, classroom time is always inefficient. For math/science, do problem sets. For humanities, write reaction papers. Submit online and receive feedback. Rinse, repeat.

The European lecture format is a thing of the past. Asian active learning is the way to go.

throwaway13000• 7 years ago

Asian Active Learning? Never heard. Can you explain more?

jimmyvalmer2• 7 years ago

Drilling. For every gifted individual who integrates knowledge just by listening, there are dozens if not hundreds of us normal folk who integrate by repetitive "doing." The factor by which arithmetic proficiency among Chinese fourth-graders exceeds that of American fourth-graders is roughly the time required to complete their homework (for my kids in US, homework takes 10 minutes on average).

bobloblaw45• 7 years ago

YES! I'm going back to college to finish my degree. I'm seeing this a lot and it's sort of difficult to get used to.

So the thing is, in some classes I think it could be totally fine. But in others I'm not so sure. For example I'm taking the statistics 1 and 2 to brush up. The first one was given by an instructor that's an enormous inverted classroom type. I aced the class and the thing is it feels like I didn't learn a single thing. I can barely tell you anything about statistics. It moved sooo slowly and we spent so much time at every tiny step. He'd talk for 10 minutes and make us get together with our groups to talk about what he just talked about. I'm now in the 2nd class and honest to god it feels like I've learned and retained more the first 2 days than the previous 11 weeks. The new professor is more "inverted-lite" almost as if she was told by the dept they need to do this (from my understanding the schools push it hard) so the group stuff still happens but it's a lot less frequently and we're always working on our own thing and not having the group turn in the assignment.

I can see how it can work. Especially maybe with the Arts or soft science classes. With a talented instructor and implemented correctly. But honestly it feels like a cost savings thing. A method to have larger classes by making the students learn for themselves. If this way really works for some people then I wonder if a 100% online course might serve some of them better.

Ask HN: Experience with Flipped/Inverted Classroom?

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