If You Haven't, It's Time to Try PBL, Blended Learning or Flipped Classrooms

As we come to the end of the semester, I (Taylor) was thinking about what we could do the challenge ourselves as educators in 2016.  It occurred to me that this is a prime opportunity to re-evaluate one of our units coming in the spring and possibly morph them into an alternate delivery.  Here is my challenge for you...

PBL, Blended Learning and Flipped Classrooms are all buzzwords that are floating around educational hashtags, blogs and articles.  Contrary to most buzzwords, these are actually really valuable concepts that can improve the way that we are facilitating learning in our classrooms.  Below are a few resources that will help you to integrate any of these strategies into your teaching. 

 Warning: Please don't attempt all 3 at once, you might explode! 

 

PBL: Let's Build Something

1. PBL or Project Based Learning

The Buck Institute of Education (BIE) is an incredible website that offers countless resources and services to help you begin or enhance your PBL experiences.  According to the BIE website reasons why PBL should be used (full list found here):

1. PBL makes school more engaging for students
2. Improves learning
3. Builds success skills for college, career, and life
4. Helps address standards
5. Provides opportunities for students to use technology
6. Makes teaching more enjoyable and rewarding
7. Connects students and schools with communities and the real world

Curious about where to start?  Check out the BIE resources page that offers opportunity to search a database of projects 

When thinking through PBL and how it compares to a traditional unit.  The linear nature of the traditional unit offers student limited opportunities for each of the elements. Looking at a PBL Unit, there are multiple opportunities for students to experience the curriculum, produce/build something that shows their understanding of the project, and check in or be assessed on their mastery of the content.  Finally students present what they have created for their project which allows an opportunity to further master the content that they have been working up close and personal with.

2.  Blended Learning 

 For some students, they thrive in the classroom.  Discussions and answering questions with solid due dates are right in their wheelhouse.  For others, the ability to think through the curriculum on their own, at a self paced nature, offer opportunities to thrive.  Blended Learning offers an ability to take the best  of both worlds.

The following video offers a visual example of blended learning.  More information and resources can be found on the Clayton Christensen Institute website.

 3. Flipped Classroom

 

Flipping your classroom offers an opportunity for the students to preview the information that will be covered in class.  From the image above, students' "homework" is watching a short (5-10 min) video/lecture about the information that will be covered in class.  While en class, students then are led through activities where they are practicing what they learned the night before.  As the lecture becomes the homework and the homework becomes class work, students are able to have more hands on, collaborative experience in the practice of the information. Flippedclassroom.org  is an incredible community of information on flipping your classroom. 

Here is a video on Flipped classrooms that offers some more information about the process and benefits.