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My favorite class I ever took was middle school algebra. We had a teacher, problem sets, and were put into groups of 3 or 4 to work through the problem sets tog
by rtpg 2y ago
My favorite class I ever took was middle school algebra. We had a teacher, problem sets, and were put into groups of 3 or 4 to work through the problem sets together.
The teacher would give a bit of a spiel to intro the problems, but the problems themselves were very self-directed, things like "measure these triangles, square these numbers, do you notice anything?" then introing the pythagorean theorem.
The teacher would float around and basically help groups that were more stuck on things than others. But students would help each other a lot, meaning the teacher is not spending their time on people who can ultimately help themselves.
This is not a format that works for all students and all class types, but when it works it works so well, and it's extremely scalable.
- currymj 2y agoit’s called a flipped classroom and students universally hate it.
- rtpg 2y agoMaybe I was in the massive minority then. Though part of it was that the format let me just work on stuff "by myself" rather than sit through a bunch of explanations I didn't need. flipped classrooms seem to imply work ahead of time though? But here we'd show up hands in our pockets and start working on the material on site
- aoanla 2y agoYeah, this isn't flipped classroom (that's "students do reading before the session on the set topic, and then question the lecturer - hence flipping the direction of "control" in the session). This is active learning with small group work and peer learning - which students tend to actually quite like. (Flipped classroom works better the more engaged the students are in the topic - for electives, fine, for mandatory courses, less good.)
- viraptor 2y agoDepends on a group and the available tutoring time. It can go well, but not in every environment. If most of your group is not interested in the first place, you're not getting anything out of it either.
- mkl 2y agoThat's definitely not flipped classroom. In flipped classroom students read or watch videos before class, then work on problems interactively in class. The concepts are introduced in the readings and videos, not in the problems.