All,
This is a fascinating thread. Thanks Jim for sharing your abstract. Sorry POD
is being coy, but kudos for your persistence. I first experienced TBL in an
“Effective Group Activities” workshop by Larry Michaelsen and Dee Fink at the
2005 POD annual meeting in Milwaukee. Go figure. And Michael, thanks for
your agnostic flipping vs. TBL distinctions. Very clever and helpful, indeed. I
don't fully agree that flipping means students watch videos of lectures they
otherwise would have listened to in class. For instance, it’s rare that a prof
would lecture for only 10 minutes in class, but that’s the norm for popular
Khan Academy screencasts that also can lead to online exercises allowing
students to practice and get immediate feedback. However, I accept that
flipping = watching videos is the common perception that has emerged.
More importantly, I agree that once lecturing isn't the primary in-class
activity, there might be some head-scratching and scrambling about what to
do next. As you suggest, TBL is a well-designed, wholistic and scalable
approach that increases the likelihood of student AND instructor engagement,
satisfaction and enjoyment. But one thing I think you've all put your finger on
is how conceptually challenging flipping, TBL or any non-lecture-based
teaching approach can be for some faculty. In fact, our beliefs about teaching
and learning can be very powerful and difficult to overcome when faced with
testimonials of student engagement by other means than what we know or
have experienced.
For example, Robertson (1999) proposed a model for how faculty beliefs about
teaching influence their evolving practice that includes the following stages:
1. Egocentrism -- focusing mainly on their role as teachers;
2. Aliocentrism -- focusing mainly on the role of learners; and
3. Systemocentrism -- focusing on the shared role of teachers and learners in
a community.
IF this evolution occurs, Robertson identifies key characteristics of the change.
First, as faculty move from one stage to the next, they bring the benefits and
biases of the previous stage. Second, they typically change their beliefs and
practices when confronted by the limitations of a current stage, which is
brought about by teaching failures. Finally, the desire for certainty and
confidence either keeps faculty in a current framework or drives their
progression to the next one in an effort to avoid a potentially paralyzing
neutral zone: "With a familiar teaching routine that they have deemed
inappropriate and with nothing to replace it, teaching becomes a struggle”
(1999, p. 279).
Jim, perhaps you’re just unlucky in who keeps reading your abstracts. But
maybe there’s a way to pitch TBL more as an evolving form of faculty
development that increases not only student engagement, but also instructor
satisfaction and enjoyment, which I really think is the hidden gem of TBL. The
trick is quickly identifying the problems that TBL solves as the “setup” to get
to this “enjoyable teaching.”
My domain is instructional technology, but I’ve used one question to organize
all of our training and support, including hybrid/blended learning: "What is one
pedagogical problem you'd like to solve or a new learning opportunity you'd
like to create?" Works every time, in terms of helping sharpen their focus of
what they want students to know, understand and do. It also helps in sharing
their lessons learned with peers. Get any faculty member talking about what
he or she can't teach or convey to students or understand about their learning,
and you'll hook other faculty, regardless of discipline. This can’t be a 10-
minute drone about one’s subject matter expertise. It has to be about
perceived obstacles to student engagement and learning.
All faculty can relate to that, so perhaps if you orient some of the workshop
toward how TBL helps solve common pedagogical problems that frustrate
instructors, maybe that might help.
Good luck,
John
John Fritz
Asst. VP, Instructional Technology & New Media
UMBC Division of Information Technology
410.455.6596 | [log in to unmask] | www.umbc.edu/oit/itnm
Reference
Robertson, D. L. (1999). Professors’ Perspectives on Their Teaching: A New
Construct and Developmental Model. Innovative Higher Education, 23(4), 271–
294. doi:10.1023/A:1022982907040
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