The educational world is abuzz with the concept of flipping. I initially saw it in response to the K-12 modules made available at Kahn Academy.   Teachers have been sufficiently impressed with the quality of the content presentation available at Kahn, that they have started “outsourcing” lecture to Kahn, and now spend class time helping their students work out the problems assigned to develop skill with using the concepts.   This “flips” the traditional use of time.  “Homework” is watching the Kahn lecture, class time is spent working the problems.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who, having met a complete roadblock in trying to solve a problem set, threw up her hands in despair.  How GREAT it would have been to have the teacher at my side, asking me the right coaching questions to help me find my way!

To some extent, this was part of the early promise of elearning – being able to move the consumption of the content presentation out of the shared classroom enabled learners to choose a convenient time to get the basic information.  Unfortunately, we haven’t been that great about structuring coached opportunities to question and apply that learning, and as a result, the behavior change we see from these module-only ‘training’ opportunities is sub par.

Even our premier universities have decided that simply moving the lectures online isn’t enough – and they don’t have to demonstrate behavior change as an outcome for their efforts!   Stanford, Harvard, and MIT, realizing that social media like forums are especially effective for supporting the human-to-human interaction around material which is essential to support the integration of material into learners’ mindsets, have started to integrate these elements into their learning platforms
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We’ve been doing the same for over a decade.  If you’re ready to “flip” or perhaps add a new online social element to your courses,  we can help you design and deliver an effective learning experience, give us a call.