Friday 22 December 2017

teaching - How to implement flipped classroom for 18 year olds?


I teach an introductory programming course at university where 99% of my students are 18-20 years old. They are used to the old and boring education system they know from high school, so they are not precisely "motivated" about learning. And since we have to have exams (I'm with a team of teachers where most of them tend to "keep things as they are and don't make me work extra") the kids' goal is usually to pass that exam with the least effort, regardless of whether they learn to code or not.


Our teaching materials are organized so that one teacher presents the theory to students and then I explain whatever they didn't understand and present them with exercises.


As they are just beginners, they don't know enough to create cool programs yet (I'm teaching the very basics of control flows, some data storage in memory and command line programming). So I'm trying to make them motivated and would like to try flipped classroom methodologies.


However, I'm not sure about how to implement it. Let's say I make videos explaining the topics so they can dedicate my whole class to practice their coding skills. I've tried making videos before (both short and longer ones) and about 5% of the students watch them, as they feel they don't have time to waste given that there are so many other exams they need to pass (other subjects). Also, since this is about programming, there isn't much to be discussed, it's like math: you sit down and get your hands onto code.



How can I best bring in any new motivational tools like flipping my classroom?




No comments:

Post a Comment

evolution - Are there any multicellular forms of life which exist without consuming other forms of life in some manner?

The title is the question. If additional specificity is needed I will add clarification here. Are there any multicellular forms of life whic...