With the university’s push towards incorporating more online teaching, “blended” courses (courses in which some classroom time is replaced by online material) have appeared. In my faculty (Public Affairs), the blended model was rolled out as a half-and-half model (with classroom meetings 1.5 hours/week rather than three). Last year, I was one of a few instructors who received a competitive grant to test pilot the format.12

Some instructors who use a blended model use formal online “modules.” I used the blended format in my Israeli-Palestinian relations course as an opportunity to assign more material, including scholarly books and articles, op-ed articles, graphic novels, and some excellent feature and documentary films.

Knowing students were reading and watching a variety of high-quality materials from a variety of perspectives, I eased off the formal lecture format and instead used class time to lead a back-and-forth discussion of the various themes and problems raised weekly — what some refer to as a “flipped” classroom.

The results were mixed. On one hand, making the classroom experience more interactive with less perceived need to “fill” the students with “information” enabled us to have a broad-ranging, analytical conversation, particularly around what can be the sensitive topic of Israeli-Palestinian relations.

On the other hand, some students complained about the additional independent work they were asked to do in lieu of the in-class time. Not all students seemed to realize that the course was in “blended” format (or didn’t realize what “blended” meant) when they registered. Neither were the pedagogical goals entirely clear to me. I was of the understanding that the push towards blended offerings was aimed at accommodating students’ off-campus employment schedules, and to partially alleviate the crunch on classroom space. Neither of these are pedagogically driven in a pure way, but both — particularly the former — can contribute to more content students trying to balance multiple demands. And in the big picture of creating an intellectual community, that — to my mind — is a worthy goal.

This year, I will run a blended model in two courses. One is an intensive writing seminar. There, students will be required to write multiple drafts outside of class on which I will give regular feedback. In that course, owing to the frequent writing exercises, I hope students will be more willing to embrace the blended format. In the Israeli-Palestinian course, realizing that 1.5 hours of reduced class time doesn’t necessarily translate to 1.5 hours of additional efficient reading time, I plan to trim the syllabus — both by reducing the reading load and reducing the frequency of written responses required.

Owing to the principle of academic freedom, we don’t tend to calibrate our reading and writing requirements across courses in any precise sense. This means that working out the optimal blended-format course structure is proving to be a trial-and-error process. I hope that providing a slightly condensed reading list will alleviate some pressure on students for whom 90 minutes of independent reading feels like “more work” than 90 minutes of in-class time.

For Shannon Butler, a professor with ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s Sprott School of Business, teaching at a new university meant a big change. And it truly was a change: Butler went from teaching upper-year classes of 45 students to first-year courses with more than 100 students each.

“There are definitely challenges in the classroom to engage students in a bigger class,” says Butler, who began teaching at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ last fall.

First-year students are experiencing a shift in their lives when they first come to university, Butler explains, and they need an adjustment period of encouragement to complete their work and stay on task.

“But I love teaching first year because there’s more I can do with the material. The material isn’t as technical as third year and there’s more flexibility with how you can present it and what you can do with it,” she says.

One of those creative ways of disseminating the material included Butler’s foray into the flipped classroom model. While that was her previous style of teaching during her years at Western University, it was the first time both her introduction to accounting courses at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ have been taught that way.

Her flipped classroom meant providing students with videos ahead of class to review, with the goal of them coming to class ready to work through problems rather than receiving a standard lecture.

“I find that makes better use of your time with the students to work hands-on with them. That way, they can watch the videos whenever and how many times they want,” Butler says.

With accounting courses being so problem heavy, Butler knew a flipped classroom model would be a good fit. Students could stay at their desks to work, while Butler would circulate to provide any help and take issues up as a group if necessary.

While most of the fall course was smooth sailing, Butler says there were challenges trying to get first-year students to use this model. To fix this, she started off class with a small review of the videos the students were tasked with watching before jumping into the work.

She also made good use of a document camera app on her phone that she could take around the classroom to work on problems with students, all the while broadcasting it live onto a screen. In the winter semester, she also used an iPad Pro with a stylus to project the written problems she was taking up.

As a newcomer to Ottawa like many of her younger students, Butler found the flipped classroom helped both her students and herself.

“For first-years, it’s a good way to get to know [professors]. I like to try to let my students know that I’m a person and approachable. [The flipped classroom] helps with that.”

Earlier this year, Butler was honoured with a 2016 Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award, which celebrates instructors who have used technology in the classroom in unique and innovative ways. Her experience with flipped classrooms, as well as her interactive, technology-driven class set-up, helped her secure the award.

Not one to rest on her laurels, Butler is trying something new with her students this semester: a live, electronic landing page where Butler and her students can contribute simultaneously. The technology, Padlet, is similar to a Google Doc, where anyone with the correct link can access the live document and write text or attach photos instantly.

With the school year just beginning, Butler hasn’t been able to explore this technology thoroughly with her classes yet, but she says her initial forays have been successful. And she knows that with each semester she’ll use her experiences to learn constantly.

“I always like to do things differently. Always.”

When most students enter a classroom, they expect to hear a professor talking at them for three hours straight. But Professor Jeffrey Erochko is hoping to change that expectation by flipping the classroom and showing students the value of class time.

Erochko has been teaching structural engineering at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University since 2013 with a research focus on earthquake engineering. In 2015, he won a for his commitment to teaching excellence and innovation. When he first developed his courses he says he decided to make them unique.

“I thought, if I’m going to do something interesting, I better do it the first time,” he says.

Erochko says he adopted a flipped classroom model of teaching, where the “lecture” happens at home in the form of videos or readings and class time is saved for more interactive, hands-on activities. He says this was tricky to implement because engineering students expect to be presented with information before working independently.

“Students are not used to preparing to come to class,” he says.

Erochko has his students watch YouTube videos with sample problems and complete readings and quizzes ahead of time. During his first year with the flipped classroom model he assigned textbook readings, which students didn’t like, so he adapted by giving them his notes on textbook chapters.

“One of the biggest challenges is to convince students that there is value in what you’re doing, in order to convince them to actually engage with the kind of learning context that you’re trying to get them to adapt to,” he says.

Erochko says students also need to be encouraged to come to class. “I think that’s the pitfall of the flipped class sometimes, that if they don’t perceive the lecture time as valuable then they just won’t come,” he says.

What works for Erochko is allowing students to get stuck on problems in class so they realize they need help.

“It’s much better for them to get that help from professionals in lecture or in tutorial than it is for them to try and struggle with that part on their own,” he says.

Erochko is now looking to incorporate an assignment where students post short videos on YouTube explaining an engineering concept or skill.

He says he is constantly adapting and changing his teaching every year, with student perception influencing the changes.

“If it’s something good I should be able to explain it to them in a way that they also agree it’s valuable,” he says.

By Lesley LeRoux, TLS freelance writer

When a group of students is interested in taking on special projects outside of coursework, it’s clear that a hunger for learning exists far beyond the classroom.

That’s what systems and computer engineering professor Cheryl Schramm discovered when students would come to her office asking if they could work on something over the summer without pay.

“They’re craving the experience because courses introduce it to them, but the formal classes just make them want to do more,” she says.

Schramm helped fulfill the need for more diverse learning strategies and extracurricular opportunities for students, which earned her a Teaching Achievement Award in 2011 and a Teaching with Technology Award in 2014.

In order to provide students with more hands-on, experiential learning, Schramm championed a robotics club, which was established in 2009. The club organizes robotics competitions in the atrium and hosts weekly ‘hacker sessions.’

“It’s all about enjoying the process of programming and learning through doing and learning through other people,” Schramm says.

“I guess that’s another aspect of my involvement in teaching, is the whole idea of the need for social engagement here at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ and the benefits that come from providing connections between people.”

Schramm says her involvement in the club has been mentoring and advocating on the part of the group. She was also instrumental in helping them find a space on campus to store the robots and equipment.

But since the club is fairly self-sustaining, Schramm has used some of the funds from her Teaching Achievement Award to provide each student in one of her classes with a Raspberry Pi, a special type of computer.

The low-cost computers help the students engage more directly with technology in the classroom, and she says several of her students had so much fun with the computers they wanted to continue using them once the course ended.

Technology is a key component to how Schramm approaches teaching. She says she aims for a flipped classroom model, assigning theory through readings and using interactive activities in class to explore at a greater depth.

One particular method she uses is creating YouTube videos with her tablet to show students how to work through various problems.

“It’s not about the correct answer; it’s how you go about answering,” Schramm says. “The important thing that I’m trying to do is give them the ‘how-to’ to achieve that answer.”

Universities today exist in constantly changing technological and social atmospheres. New teaching tools like Skype, cell phone polling and online videos have changed the way professors and students interact in the classroom. But at the heart of it, are classes still professor-driven lecture periods? If so, what does this mean for student learning?

These questions are at the center of some hot topics in education. Born from a dissatisfaction of the traditional lecture style, a new method has emerged as an answer: flipping.

Flipping the classroom involves breaking down the expected learning style so students and teachers are on the same level as partners in learning. The professor is no longer a talking head and students are no longer passive vessels for information.

Learning is active and interactive, incorporating pre-class preparation, discussion and teamwork. Students do most of what would normally be covered in class before class even starts, whether it’s readings, written assignments, or online work. They then spend the lecture period working through material with their peers and the instructor as a group.

Recently, Joel Harden and Jeff Erochko, two ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ professors, tested out the flipped classroom model and came up with very interesting results.

Harden, a law professor, created his unique flipping style by focusing on what he likes best: writing, not testing. Instead of the usual regurgitation of dates and facts on tests, Harden graded his students on written assignments sent to him weekly.

“I tried to get them to take more ownership of their work rather than being passively present and listening to me talk for an hour and a half or three hours,” he says.

These weekly assignments are miniature legal briefing sheets that are supposed to show how each student is grappling with the material. Once they’re submitted the night before the course, Harden reviews them and works the results into the next day’s class.

Engineering professor Erochko took a slightly different approach to his flipping experience.

In his class, third-year engineering students had to read notes about what would be covered and watch informative videos ahead of time. When students arrived, they had a basis of what the material was and Erochko could focus on solving problems then, instead of having students confused at home, where they didn’t have access to help.

“Having them do that in the lecture, and addressing those immediate misconceptions about how to do the problems, I feel this has made a big difference,” he says. “At least getting them up and running and not starting from zero.”

But while some sing the praises of the flipped classroom, it’s not always the perfect solution for every class.

Erochko found strong pushback from his engineering students, given that they usually don’t have to read the textbook or do structured preparation for class ahead of time.

“They expected I should be delivering the information to them, like, ‘What am I paying for?’” he says.

He also ran into students who complained because they weren’t used to flipping’s non-traditional learning style.

“They have very strong expectations about what your role is, what their role is, and what the lecture should be,” Erochko says. “You really have to commit to the method in order to use it. If you go half way, it just comes off to them like you’re doubling up their work.”

Harden found this to be the case too, and stressed the importance of letting students know in advance that this is a different learning style, as some don’t thrive in these conditions.

“You have to tell them right out of the gate that it’s not television and they’re not going to passively sit and absorb it. I’m requiring them to participate,” he says.

Used in different faculties and with different learners, flipping can be both positive and negative. While Harden says “it can work for anybody” if they keep a balance between chaos and order, Erochko says he’s not completely convinced it’s the best for students, though it can work.

“If I had any advice for my colleagues, it’s to think about how it makes sense for you,” Harden says.

With a big push towards enhancing student engagement at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, Shermeen incorporated a number of elements into her course to improve the student learning experience, including:

• Blended learning through cuLearn
• Introduction, Reinforcement, Mastery and Assessment (IRMA) skill level curriculum map
• Engineering Graduate Attribute Development (EGAD)
• Bloom’s taxonomy
• Components of ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s teaching and learning framework

During this roundtable, she’ll reveal her observations of the impact these initiatives had on both the students and the instructor.

The roundtable runs from 12-1 p.m. in room 422 Dunton Tower. A pizza lunch will be provided.

Space is limited, so .

What Prof. Nimijean presented at the last EDC roundtable is a very interesting example of applying two different instructional approaches and getting a possible “Goldilocks dilemma” where things might end up “just right” using a third, mixed approach.

In the first version of the course, live lectures were supported with text rich PowerPoint slides that served as lecture notes to students. Prof. Nimijean revamped the second iteration of the course and students were asked to watch pre-recorded video lectures online, while class time used simplistic PowerPoint slides that framed the in-class discussions and activities; a ‘flipped’ teaching and learning model.

During his presentation, Prof. Nimijean displayed the final grade distribution of his two classes – the class that followed a traditional lecture driven approach plotted as a bell curve and the flipped approach plotted as an inverted bell curve.

So should we expect a normal distribution when plotting the outcomes of instruction? If the assessment you conduct is criterion-referenced and not norm-referenced, then we, instructional designers, would answer “no.” Educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom proposed that the “normal curve” (many students learning medially, few well and less well, some very well and very poorly) should not be an expected model of outcomes of instruction. This kind of distribution, Bloom argued, is what we might expect to occur without the intervention of instruction. Instruction should foster learning and scaffold learners. He argued that most students can master what we have to teach them, if we provide a learning environment conducive to mastering the subject (Bloom, B. S. (1968), Learning for Mastery). A body of research conducted since then, including a comprehensive, meta-analysis review, has confirmed the initial research by Bloom (Kulik, C. C., Kulik, J. A., & Bangert-Drowns, R. L. (1990a). Effectiveness of mastery learning programs: A meta-analysis).

Prof. Nimijean noted that he had more students perform very well after changing his approach towards more student-centered models of instruction, but he also observed more students perform very poorly, and the majority of students performing less than medially. The inverted grade distribution shows the impact of his new teaching strategy for a number of students who demonstrated learning outcomes well beyond the average and pleasantly surprised the instructor.

The case that the outcome distribution became inverted in the second version of the course is, in my opinion, the consequence of changing more than one variable in the new iteration of the course: besides including activities that support higher-level thinking and engagement (the student centered approaches), the course appears to have lost some the scaffolding that the majority of students may have needed (lecture notes, text in the slides, more structured class, etc.).

Providing additional material in a different format not only helps students who have visual/hearing challenges, but also the students who have a different learning style preference. There is also a significant amount of research that shows that minimally guided instruction is “less effective and less efficient than instructional approaches that place strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning process” (Kirschner, Sweller, Clark, “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work”, 2006.). Prof. Nimijean realized this immediately and noted that the next time he would try the new approach with more “mature” students, which is also supported by this same research (“The advantage of guidance begins to recede only when learners have sufficiently high prior knowledge to provide “internal” guidance.”).

I think that Prof. Nimijean is on the right track by courageously trying out new teaching strategies. Going back to the “Goldilocks” analogy, I suggest keeping the best of both approaches – return the scaffolding that the majority of students need in terms of supporting material and structure, but keep activities that encourage higher participation and higher order thinking with the hopes that the final outcome distribution remains normal but with a smaller variance and a higher peak translated towards higher summative achievement scores.

In thousands of classrooms across Canada, students sit in bolted-down chairs, periodically nodding off as a professor drones on for three hours straight. In these classes, a lecture truly lives up to its name. It’s not always pretty.

And then there’s Richard Nimijean’s classes.

Nimijean, a professor of Canadian Studies at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, decided that he wanted to try a new way of teaching: a flipped classroom.

Flipping a classroom means that the traditional professor-student dynamic is thrown out the window in favour of a co-operative learning environment where students think critically about the course material.

This includes creating discussion questions for break-out groups in class, participating in cuLearn exercises, and keeping PowerPoint presentations brief to promote active learning and avoid distractions.

“Flipping is a little bit dangerous but also a lot of fun,” says Nimijean. “Any time you try to do something different, there’s always a fear that’s involved because you’re going away from what’s known, not only for you but for your students.”

Nimijean’s first experience in flipping was while teaching a Canadian Studies course in the summer semester of 2012. He faced some difficulties as students could choose to watch the course online—which meant a vibrant classroom atmosphere wasn’t possible with only six students.

“Despite my intentions, it turned into a three hour lecturefest twice a week,” he says.

He tried again in 2013 in his next major first-year class, now armed with a better understanding of flipping from the past year and a half.

Term papers and lectures were gone; Nimijean introduced break-out groups, one minute essays, and final papers that made students think critically about real world scenarios.

“I think students do recognize when you’re trying, when you’re passionate, when you listen to them and respect them,” he says.

Flipping didn’t always live up to Nimijean’s expectations, though. Some students found it too challenging and were confused by his break from the traditional lecture atmosphere. After receiving some negative midterm reviews by students, he decided to revert back to the standard teaching method.

“You feel like you’re really putting yourself out there. But it was seen as a burden precisely by those students who you’re trying to help the most,” he says.

Despite the stumbling blocks, Nimijean says he’d like to try it again, calling it a “great experience.” This time, he says he’ll stick to upper-year classes, where participation and stimulating class discussion are more welcomed.

“I think the benefits are there, but as I’m reflecting on things now, it could always be better. It’s an ongoing experiment.”

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