Flipping the classroom is a deceptively simple idea. Instead of students learning via in-class lecture and then working on homework afterwards, the flipped classroom has students prepare for class ahead of time (the literature on the subject most often suggests by watching a lecture screencast or listening to a podcast) and then using class time to apply this new found knowledge.
If you want more detail, but in a still easy to digest format, Educause has an entry in their Seven Things You Should Know About series on Flipped Classrooms. (PDF)
While it seems easy enough, there are a few potential problems with using a flipped classroom approach. (1) Professors would have to create, record and post a lecture before class. This requires technological know how and possibly some equipment and software purchases. (2) Brand new in-class exercises will have to be created that are effective in engaging students. (3) Faculty will have to trust students will actually do the work ahead of time so that the class can hit the ground running when they meet in person.
Every year in my legal research courses students would always ask for more hands on experience with the materials. And every year we replied that we would have loved to given them the opportunity, but it never seemed possible with the number of students and the amount of resources in the library. The closest I came to it was photocopies of book pages so they could “play along” as explained how a resource was used. I wonder if my lectures could have been recorded and then meet with small groups in the library for hands on practice? Instead of a few 50 minute classes a week, while the student in class time would remain the same, this could easily grow into a dozen or more hours of class meeting time for the professor.
Legal research courses are skills based and coming up with a hands on element isn’t that difficult. What about traditional law courses? Could they work with a Flipped scenario given the fact that the lecture and the students’ interaction with the professor during the same are the cornerstone of traditional legal education?
Of course, traditional legal education is, by many standards, not very useful or practical.
Maybe a Flipped Classroom scenario could be a way to interject some real world experience into the legal academe? A way to introduce the new holy grail of “practical” and “skills based” learning into the curriculum?
In this scenario, students read cases ahead of time as usual and then review material (usually a lecture) provided by the professor. Now for the hard part: What to do in class that doesn’t fall into the usual trap of a one on one Socratic dialog while the rest of the class plays solitaire on their computer? I think small groups should also be avoided whenever possible because, let’s face it, one person ends up doing most of the work while the restt are shut out either willingly or not. Obviously in-class activities will vary wildly depending on the subject taught and drafting a will or interpreting a contract clause isn’t going to work every week.
I did have an idea on how CALI could assist with this, however.
Okay, you all know and love the CALI lesson library. (If you don’t…900+ lessons, written and edited by law professors and librarians, checked several times and routinely for quality and accuracy before they get published.) But did you know that you can by pass the system, write your own lesson using the CALI Author software and publish it via “Autopublish”? It won’t get the official CALI stamp of quality and only people that have the link to it can use it, but it otherwise it has all the bells and whistles of a regular CALI lesson.
So here’s my plan: Students read cases, professor pre-records lecture. (And, come to think of it, he or she could use the CALI Author software to publish their lecture materials.) Before class, professor also transforms his or her standard Socratic song and dance into a CALI Autopublished lesson. One main version CALI lesson projected on classroom display and simultaneously each student can individually work through it on their personal computing device. Discussion can occur in between questions/sections of the CALI lesson. Afterwards, students’ scores on the lesson would be available to the professor so there would be accountability for their in-class work.
So that’s one way it could work in a law school setting. I have to admit that I’m not entirely sold on the idea of a flipped classroom in law schools, but it’s not the worst idea that I’ve ever seen either.
Have you tried a flipped classroom? Let us know how it worked out in the comments.
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