[phantom784]

> I read a few years ago about a teacher (I think highschool) who put his lectures on YouTube for students to view in their own time and then used the in class hours for interaction, questions, tests.

That seems like a smart approach. It reverses the traditional model of "lecture in class, homework outside of class".

[raphman]

A smart approach that does not solve the AI problem - actually flipped classrooms work worse now due to AI usage.

My own experience with flipped classrooms (which seems to be shared by quite a few people who have tried it out): they only work well if all students actually read/watch the materials beforehand. In small, advanced courses, intrinsic motivation may be sufficient - but in most cases you need some extrinsic coercion - such as a mandatory quiz about the materials or hand-written lecture notes that need to be shown at each in-person session.

With AI, some people don't watch the lectures but let ChatGPT give them a summary which they submit. Then these people poison your in-person session with their lack of knowledge and motivation.

[CuriouslyC]

Research has shown that testing is far and away the most valuable academic tool.

Just have a quiz every day. In fact, have _TWO_ quizzes, one at the start of class and one at the end, and take the higher of the two scores. In between the first quiz and the second, work through problems with the students designed to help people that bombed the first test figure out how to pass the second.

[MichaelNolan]

The best part of a quiz everyday is that in addition to the testing effect, you can easily fit in the spacing effect and interleaving effect. It’s a rock solid combo, that is well studied. We have pretty strong evidence that it works for all students in all domains.

[Ratelman]

I actually like this idea - makes sense at face value - as long as they design the test in such a way that it aptly applies the knowledge instead of just learning for the sake of passing test like questions...

[m_dupont]

I had a flipped classroom for my topology lecture. It was one of my absolute favorites.

We had no lectures, the teacher just gave us a short, concise textbook to read a chapter of every week.

In class time was devoted to discussing and problem solving.

But yes, it only worked because we were a small class of 15 math students

[jjice]

My Cryptography professor did this during COVID, since the classes were split in person. It was an interesting model. I'm not sure if I loved it or not, but it was at least a change of pace. Getting 100% of the class time to ask questions was really nice, but it ended up with him re-teaching most of the online lecture in class because some quarter to half the class just didn't watch the lectures.

If done more stringently (if you didn't watch the lecture, I'm not reteaching it), it maybe would've had a bigger impact, but I'm not sure.

Office hours remained king for serious Q and A for the class.

[kenjackson]

One way to fix that issue that I’ve seen is a daily quiz to start the class. The key is the quiz is super easy. Even if you were confused by the lecture, if you watched it at all you’d likely get a 100 on the quiz. If you didn’t watch it you’d likely get a 0. This quickly for people watching the lectures online ahead of class.

[UncleMeat]

Flipped classroom pedagogy has been the subject of a huge amount of research. Ultimately "one weird trick" solutions don't tend to work in education. Enough students don't watch the lectures that you end up needing to go over the material in class anyway. Funding and autonomy works, but nobody likes to pay more.

[olpad]

I always absolutely hated when a teacher did a reverse classroom and I had to “learn” at home and then practice in the classroom. I think the solution is more engaging lessons and less outside work. I know why homework exists, but homework is a chore that most people want to get done as fast as possible. If kids got to learn something interesting in school and then have their free time after school, there would be less dependence on AI. If they’re interested in the topic, they’ll put more effort into it. If not, they were never going to retain it anyway

[TaupeRanger]

When left to their own devices, 99% of children are not interested enough in math, history, literature, languages, or almost any other school subject to engage with it willingly. Only teaching "interesting" things that kids are "interested" in is both impossible (too many varied kids per class for that to work 100% of the time) and even if possible, would leave kids with zero practical knowledge, because learning most of that stuff is not something kids inherently want to do.

College is different, because theoretically you should be taking classes that are relevant to your field (although there are still "core" requirements that are somewhat high-school adjacent).

[olpad]

I’m not saying only teach interesting things, I’m saying teach things in an interesting and engaging way so that kids don’t feel the need to cheat their way through it to just get it done.

College is a different dynamic from a middle/high school classroom, but I don’t remember 95% of the material from my college engineering classes anyway, it’s the problem solving and information finding that I’ve retained and have helped me do the things I do. I remember the stuff from the classes that taught me the material in an engaging way though.

[jplusequalt]

>I’m not saying only teach interesting things, I’m saying teach things in an interesting and engaging way so that kids don’t feel the need to cheat their way through it to just get it done.

"Just do it right and it won't be a problem." This is not an actionable plan. What is engaging? Who gets to decide that? The teacher? The students? The parents? How do deal with certain kids finding different approaches more or less engaging? How do you expect a teacher to curtail their teaching approach to dozens of children at the same time?

[isityettime]

> homework is a chore that most people want to get done as fast as possible

Worksheets certainly are. But good homework, even if it's challenging, is what makes a reasonably fast-paced course even possible. In a well-paced university course you're typically spending proportionally several times as much time working on it out of class than you are in class. Then class time is both preparation and catch-up, similar to office hours.

This was true of my most demanding humanities courses (sometimes reading 100 pages a week directly from academic journals, not easy reading) as well as my most challenging math courses (group theory, ring theory). Once the pace gets fast, there just isn't enough time for you to learn everything you need to inside the classroom anyway.

And in those classes, where homework was really essential for learning at the required pace and depth of mastery, my instructors didn't even need to factor the homework into my grades at all. In some of them, we could get "feedback" on homework but it was never officially recorded in our grades... and yet, anyone who didn't do it would fail the next test. If homework doesn't have that characteristic, it probably doesn't need to be assigned at all.

If "flipped classroom" means that students are expected to do all of their homework in class, then indeed it'll feel like a waste of time to many of the smarter kids, and it will also just be unfeasible for advanced courses (which theoretically should be most courses in a university, though it currently isn't). But if it means "we don't even have time to lecture you on every single thing you need to learn, therefore you must arrive already having done the reading and the exercises, and we'll use this time to help clear up misunderstandings"... that's already how classes for grown-ups are in universities.

[jplusequalt]

>If kids got to learn something interesting in school and then have their free time after school, there would be less dependence on AI.

Kids get to learn lots of interesting things in school. The problem is that they're kids! They want immediate gratification from phones/games/recess, not to do the hard work of learning.

[jplusequalt]

How does this scale in practice? We already require students be at school for 7 hours a day. If they now have to watch 3-4 hours of lectures at home every day, then students are left with little time to do anything else.

What about those students who don't have stable home environments? How are they supposed to find multiple hours a day to watch lectures?

How does this address the underlying issue of students off loading work? You've replaced homework with lectures, but haven't solved the problem of making sure the student is actually participating.

Logistically, this could only work if you shortened the school days, but then you would need to adjust the rest of society around that. Many parents structure their work days around their kids school schedules, and if kids need to go school later in the day, or get out earlier, that places a burden on the parents.

[alistairSH]

We’re discussing university, right? It’s supposed to be a full-time effort, at least for a normal pace undergrad or any post- graduate program.

For secondary school, I do agree with you - homework load can be problematic for some students. But at the same time, my honors classes all came with hours of homework and I’m not sure I would have been as prepared for uni without it.

[mysteria]

From my experience it works fine if it's one class that's doing it. If multiple classes are doing it then like you said it's literally a couple extra hours a day watching lectures and most students end up skipping them, forcing the instructor to end up teaching during class time anyways.