7 ms·

I’ve been doing flipped classrooms for nine years now. I teach mathematics at a community college. What I’ve found so that students drop out much sooner in my

by sykh 9y ago

I’ve been doing flipped classrooms for nine years now. I teach mathematics at a community college. What I’ve found so that students drop out much sooner in my flipped classroom style versus traditional lecture style class. But the overall rate hasn’t changed. Students can’t fake it in my flipped classroom style. If they come unprepared, and this is obvious when it happens, I don’t help them doing the problem sets in class. I only help the students who are prepared. The lectures they are supposed to watch have been created by me. I create my own content. The slackers die off quickly in my format. This makes for a much better end of semester for me and the remaining students. There is no cure for apathy. If they don’t want to work they won’t. They’ll blame whatever they can regardless of format. I do wonder how success is measured in the article. Is it passing rate? That’s easy to increase. Has the material been mastered better in alternative format classes? That should be the real test of success. To date I’ve never encountered an institution that measures success correctly.

silveroriole 9y ago
Don’t you get in trouble for what could be seen as refusing to teach? I know you are creating the teaching content, but I can’t see managers/appraisers being comfortable with high drop out rates. And what is the student feedback like? edit: ah sorry I see you said the drop out rate itself doesn’t change, fair enough.
- sykh 9y ago
  The passing rate has improved a bit but dropout rates are essentially unchanged. What has mostly changed is that the students can’t fake the fact they didn’t do the work. My dean has been supportive. I don’t do student opinion surveys so I don’t have information with regard to that.
SiempreViernes 9y ago
Man, if there was some reliable way of measuring knowledge we would probably solve education in about 10 years... The article actually just talks about distribution of teaching modes, but links to an article about positive outcome from active learning that uses passing rate as metric.
- sykh 9y ago
  Well passing rate is a very bad meaurement. It’s so easy to fudge. In math a standardized final exam written by a third party would be a much better measurement of learning in my opinion.
  - chongli 9y ago
    In math a standardized final exam written by a third party would be a much better measurement of learning in my opinion I don't know about that. Standardized exams get students to focus on exam prep to the exclusion of all else. Then, when they encounter material outside the scope of the exam, they struggle mightily. I think we should be teaching broadly applicable problem-solving skills, not highly specific standardized exam material.
    - sykh 9y ago
      I’m not saying a standardized test would be a great way to measure learning, just that it is better than looking at passing rates. Passing rates are easy to make higher. When talking about student success in my experience it’s always about passing rates and not student knowledge. Also a test written by a third party could be varied from semester to semester. But almost all students at the level I teach at struggle with encountering a new problem type. I think it would carry more weight if student success in calc 1 were measured by how many who take calc 2 pass and how many can pass a standardized calc 1 exam and other such measures of student knowledge.
pmoriarty 9y ago
"There is no cure for apathy. If they don’t want to work they won’t. They’ll blame whatever they can regardless of format." That's a little harsh, and also doesn't even acknowledge that the teacher has any responsibility to engage their students and spark their interest in the subject. Students might not do their homework and engage with the subject for all sorts of reasons apart from apathy. They might have depression, be too stressed out, or have a host of other emotional problems that affect their performance and engagement. They might have taken on too large of a course load, or might not be getting enough sleep because of work they're doing outside of school or be preoccupied in taking care of their family. In some schools, the students' own safety, or that of their family, might be their overwhelming preoccupation. When I was young, I had a lot of trouble motivating myself in subjects I didn't find interesting, but excelled in those I did. You could call the cause of my performance in the former subjects "apathy", but the teacher also has a role to play here, and need not be just a helpless bystander. On occasion I was lucky enough to have talented teachers who were able to interest me in subjects that I found completely uninteresting before I took their class. But way too often I had teachers who would read straight out of the textbook during class, who you could tell really did not enjoy teaching, or who just weren't particularly good at it. In those cases, the students have to rely on whatever interest they have in the subject to keep them going. If they don't have that interest, then they have to find motivation some other way. This can be difficult for kids who are still maturing and finding their way in the world. My own performance at university improved tremendously when I went back after working for many years, and I was able to harness a tremendous motivation that I just didn't have when I was younger. I was also able to eliminate distractions, focus completely on performing well at school, and over the years had finally learned how to learn (a skill usually not taught at school). As a result I greatly outperformed virtually all the rest of my much younger classmates. Finding a sense of direction, becoming effectively self-motivating, seeing academic performance as more important than partying or other outside interests, knowing how to learn, understanding how tough it is as an adult in the "real world" and what a difference having skills and knowledge could make, having a genuine interest in the subject matter, valuing knowledge and learning for their own sake, and many other things that could help students perform academically are things that schools could help students with, but unfortunately usually they don't.
- 9y ago

by sykh 9y ago

silveroriole 9y ago

Don’t you get in trouble for what could be seen as refusing to teach? I know you are creating the teaching content, but I can’t see managers/appraisers being comfortable with high drop out rates. And what is the student feedback like? edit: ah sorry I see you said the drop out rate itself doesn’t change, fair enough.

sykh 9y ago
The passing rate has improved a bit but dropout rates are essentially unchanged. What has mostly changed is that the students can’t fake the fact they didn’t do the work. My dean has been supportive. I don’t do student opinion surveys so I don’t have information with regard to that.

SiempreViernes 9y ago

Man, if there was some reliable way of measuring knowledge we would probably solve education in about 10 years... The article actually just talks about distribution of teaching modes, but links to an article about positive outcome from active learning that uses passing rate as metric.

sykh 9y ago
Well passing rate is a very bad meaurement. It’s so easy to fudge. In math a standardized final exam written by a third party would be a much better measurement of learning in my opinion.
- chongli 9y ago
  In math a standardized final exam written by a third party would be a much better measurement of learning in my opinion I don't know about that. Standardized exams get students to focus on exam prep to the exclusion of all else. Then, when they encounter material outside the scope of the exam, they struggle mightily. I think we should be teaching broadly applicable problem-solving skills, not highly specific standardized exam material.
  - sykh 9y ago
    I’m not saying a standardized test would be a great way to measure learning, just that it is better than looking at passing rates. Passing rates are easy to make higher. When talking about student success in my experience it’s always about passing rates and not student knowledge. Also a test written by a third party could be varied from semester to semester. But almost all students at the level I teach at struggle with encountering a new problem type. I think it would carry more weight if student success in calc 1 were measured by how many who take calc 2 pass and how many can pass a standardized calc 1 exam and other such measures of student knowledge.

pmoriarty 9y ago

"There is no cure for apathy. If they don’t want to work they won’t. They’ll blame whatever they can regardless of format." That's a little harsh, and also doesn't even acknowledge that the teacher has any responsibility to engage their students and spark their interest in the subject. Students might not do their homework and engage with the subject for all sorts of reasons apart from apathy. They might have depression, be too stressed out, or have a host of other emotional problems that affect their performance and engagement. They might have taken on too large of a course load, or might not be getting enough sleep because of work they're doing outside of school or be preoccupied in taking care of their family. In some schools, the students' own safety, or that of their family, might be their overwhelming preoccupation. When I was young, I had a lot of trouble motivating myself in subjects I didn't find interesting, but excelled in those I did. You could call the cause of my performance in the former subjects "apathy", but the teacher also has a role to play here, and need not be just a helpless bystander. On occasion I was lucky enough to have talented teachers who were able to interest me in subjects that I found completely uninteresting before I took their class. But way too often I had teachers who would read straight out of the textbook during class, who you could tell really did not enjoy teaching, or who just weren't particularly good at it. In those cases, the students have to rely on whatever interest they have in the subject to keep them going. If they don't have that interest, then they have to find motivation some other way. This can be difficult for kids who are still maturing and finding their way in the world. My own performance at university improved tremendously when I went back after working for many years, and I was able to harness a tremendous motivation that I just didn't have when I was younger. I was also able to eliminate distractions, focus completely on performing well at school, and over the years had finally learned how to learn (a skill usually not taught at school). As a result I greatly outperformed virtually all the rest of my much younger classmates. Finding a sense of direction, becoming effectively self-motivating, seeing academic performance as more important than partying or other outside interests, knowing how to learn, understanding how tough it is as an adult in the "real world" and what a difference having skills and knowledge could make, having a genuine interest in the subject matter, valuing knowledge and learning for their own sake, and many other things that could help students perform academically are things that schools could help students with, but unfortunately usually they don't.

9y ago