Thanks, Gary. And thanks for the conversation earlier. It was fun to hear your voice and pick your brain for a short minute. Hope it happens again.

LikeLike

Ben,

Great post on the power of insiders to make a difference. That’s a good reminder for all of us who want to see change and – more importantly – be a part of the process that causes the change. Pay attention, be thoughtful, and speak up when it’s right. Good advice to live by.

LikeLiked by 1 person

Thanks Ben,

I agree totally on the spitballs. Seeing the problem is easy – fixing it is much more challenging (as every homeowner with a do-it-yourself mentality will attest). Addressing your spitballs more specifically – I don’t know which is better. Waiting until it’s perfect is kind of silly is you can at least provide better right now. The question I guess you have to answer is, is it actually better? Thanks again for your thoughts!

Brooke,

I agree – it is a difficult thing to balance. My argument to this is simply that if you don’t consider teaching for tenure then you don’t value teaching. If effective teaching is valued then it should be required for the tenure process. As long as it’s not then we all at least understand what the true expectations are.

This sounds really familiar–faculty becoming overwhelmed trying to achieve tenure. I think that this is a huge balance to consider in our education system. There are so many cool and innovative things that could be used in classrooms, but it can be really hard for instructors to find time to innovate and revamp currently developed curricula.

This is such a disappointing story–it seems like the professor here did an extremely poor job running their classroom. I wonder if, in this case, a traditional style classroom would have been any better. I think that simply ignoring these issues by not using group work just pushed the problem somewhere else, but it definitely seems like this professor was not equipped to understand or assist in creating an inclusive flipped classroom setting. I also think that there is value in diversity of experiences in the classroom. As this account notes, not all people enjoy participating and being that actively outgoing. I think there’s definitely a balance to accommodate all students in their learning.

Thanks for the post. Although I am only one person, I have had good experiences with a flipped classroom. The class that I was in was a stats class in the human development department and I was the only male. Part of my positive experience was that the instructor, also female, stayed engaged throughout the entire class, which, to my understanding is one primary objective of having a flipped class i.e. more direct interface with the teacher. I suppose the lesson is that the teacher is responsible for the class and needs to be truly present. Thanks again for the post.