“If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom.” John Medina, Brain Rules In a flip class, educators have dedicated a lot of attention and valiant effort to redesigning approaches to direct classroom instruction (e.g. lecture) […]
Category archives for Interactive Teaching
Want to make the subject matter come alive for your students? Most of us do. This is easier when we are in the classroom and can interact with students one on one and react to their blank stares when we are talking nonsense. But what about when they are at home? In a recent conversation […]
Ready to turn your students’ worlds right side up? Flip your classroom with Peer Instruction. Peer Instruction is the first innovative teaching method I tried the second time teaching my “big girl” course – a graduate level seminar on educational theory at Teachers College, Columbia University. I had been working as a postdoc with Eric […]
Flipped Tips: A Daily Tip Series on Teaching and Learning focused on Flipped Classrooms and Peer Instruction Turn to Your Neighbor features quick, practical advice and ideas, in 140 characters or less, for flipping your class. On this page, you can find a selection of those tips categorized. Tips are posted on Twitter daily using […]
In Understanding by Design, Wiggins and McTighe emphasize that the Big Ideas of a course are the most “important and enduring” ideas of an area of study. They also refer to these as linchpin ideas – “the linchpin is the pin that keeps the wheel in place on an axle. Thus, a linchpin idea is […]
A very big THANK YOU to all of our readers and members of the Peer Instruction Network! Turn to Your Neighbor was born on February 25, 2012. And today, we turned 30,000 hits old. Top Three Turn to Your Neighbor Posts The top three TTYN posts discuss flipped implementation with tips for promoting both out-of […]
Close your eyes and imagine a place, on a planet far far away, where students relish doing challenging homework problems…on their own and smile while doing them; in fact, where they may even be inspired to do individual homework and have no compulsion to cheat. A cozy place where during most of a three hour lecture […]
I can’t get my students to do their readings before coming to class. No really, I can’t. Motivating students to do pre-class work is one of the most common barriers we face as educators, regardless of what we teach or where we teach it. And for those of us trying to flip our classrooms, motivating […]
School starts in two weeks! For Peer Instruction Network member Rafael Escudero, a professor of mathematics at Universidad del Norte in Baranquilla, Colombia, this reality hit four weeks early. Escudero is one in a small group of innovative faculty transforming their courses at Uninorte under the leadership of Peer Instruction Network member and founding director […]
It is a month before the semester starts and you want to try flipping your classroom using Peer Instruction in the Fall. You’ve read the blog posts, gone through the Quick Start Guide, now are looking to snuggle up with a good journal article or two to do a bit more in-depth preparation. Here is a […]
Last week, we heard from Peer Instruction Network member, Ryan Campbell, who teaches high school history using Peer Instruction. This is the second part in his 2-part series on how to adapt PI for use in high school settings. The Ten Non-Commandments for adapting Peer Instruction to the high school setting: Part 2 in a […]
Post by Ryan Campbell with an introduction by Julie Schell, June 2012 Many Peer Instruction Network members wonder if PI works in high schools and how. For example, Andrew from Tomball, Texas wants to know – What does PI look like in high schools and member Janet from Falls Church, Virginia asks, how can PI be well-integrated in high […]
This week we have a guest Blog post from Peer Instruction Network Member, Dr. Cassandre Alvarado. Turn to Your Neighbor readers will recognize her name - we have been following Dr. Alvarado this semester, as she taught a graduate education class at The University of Texas at Austin using Peer Instruction for the first time. […]
You’re convinced, Peer Instruction works better than lecture. Now, how can you convince your colleagues of the benefits of moving lecture out and learning in to our classrooms? Madeline, a Peer Instruction Network member (PINm) who teaches science at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, warns, “Don’t expect to convince people easily.” Indeed, educational reformers […]
The first time I witnessed a flipped classroom with Peer Instruction live was in 2008, in New York, in a two-level lecture hall with a balcony, complete with over 500 students filling the seats. I dutifully jotted down in my researcher field notes: “9:05 AM – all students seem to be playing around with […]
Late on a Friday afternoon, I stood in front of 30 exhausted graduate students in a social science course I teach at Teachers College, Columbia University. Knowing that I had the perfect thing to perk them up, I excitedly informed them it was “time for a clicker question!” As they ruffled through their book bags […]
Peer Instruction Network member Dr. Cassandre Alvarado’s graduate classroom at the University of Texas at Austin is so quiet, you could hear a pin drop. Her 18 students are sitting around a large oval table, silently staring at the front of the classroom, but not because they are listening to her lecture. Dr. Alvarado is implementing Peer […]
Peer Instruction: A research-based method for flipping your classroom. While “flipping the classroom” may seem like a recent phenomenon, Peer Instruction, developed in the early 1990s, has always elevated that core educational site to a place where much more than information delivery transpires. Backed by more than 20 years of research, PI transforms classrooms from […]
“We want lecture!” Faculty who try out flipped classroom techniques will undoubtably face this response from students. In February 2012, conversation on education list-serves about student resistance was stimulated in response to a Chronicle article titled, “How ‘Flipping’ the Classroom Can Improve the Traditional Lecture”. One reason students resist flipped class methods, including those which use Peer Instruction (PI), […]
