The inconvenient reality that we should stop using SCORMs

I have been writing this blog post on and off for the last 2 years, but up until now have not had the confidence to publish – as I expect what I have to say here, won’t sit comfortably with many, and as a freelancer, labelling yourself as a potential heretic isn’t always deemed as good business sense.

However, the well respected and really experienced Dan Marsden recently published a similar post titled ‘SCORM Expert: Stop publishing new SCORM content‘ which has spurred me into finishing off this series of posts, as I believe the education and training sectors really need to have this conversation.

Dan’s post goes into a bit of the history of SCORMs, which I won’t repeat here – but the underlying message is that the SCORM format is about 20 years old and created for a completely different era – most notably, the iPhone/iPad hadn’t been invented at the time, and as such SCORM didn’t need to consider the potential for small screens, touch access, and people learning whilst mobile.

There are many issues with the SCORM format:

• Once you have set up and used a SCORM item in a course – to make any changes to this is really tricky.
• If you don’t manage and keep the source files that create them, they can become impossible/very expensive to update.
• SCORMs don’t work well on small screens
• SCORMs are generally not good for accessibility
• SCORMs work best when there is a good internet connection. If accessing on a poor connection or one that dips in and out, the learner may think they have completed something, but (due to the lack of connection at the time) this information may not be fed back to the VLE – this causes all sorts of problems, with students getting frustrated at having to redo things they have already completed once in order to complete a course.
• SCORM files are large – this has an impact on the VLE hosting (you need a slightly bigger server) but has an even greater impact on a learner who if accessing via mobile data, can eat into their monthly allowances.

The big question

Given the above list of horrors, why is SCORM still so widely used and effectively the industry standard? The simple answer is that it is too easy to just follow suit and not challenge the Status Quo. If an organisation doesn’t have the finances or resources to create their own learning content, it is very easy to outsource this to someone else – and there are lots of individuals and companies out there, who make a living by taking your raw content and converting it into a SCORM for you. It is this behaviour that has allowed this out of date format to perpetuate for so long, and when something is the industry standard (as SCORM is), it takes a lot of confidence and a real depth of understanding to call out against this standard – most managers (and freelancers) don’t have this level of confidence or wisdom.

The better alternative

Having established that the SCORM format is not fit for purpose, what is the alternative format? This is easy to answer; well written and clean html is the best alternative – which if using a VLE like Moodle, can easily be achieved by building the content directly using the native functionality – e.g. an appropriate combination of Pages, Books, Lessons, Forums, Quizzes, Assignments etc. maybe with a few H5p interactions as appropriate. Doing this overcomes all of the problems listed above – but it does take longer to do well and requires more skilled people to do this (which in turn increases the cost). It does also present the risk of tying you to the platform which is one of the arguments that have been used previously in favour of SCORMs, but hopefully by now, organisations will know which platform they have and be confident it is there for a few years to come. This approach does make it harder to outsource the process to external people – as you either have to give them direct access to your system to build directly in there, or they have to build in their own systems and then export/import into yours which can be slow and not always 100% reliable.

The drivers for change

One of the big drivers for change here could be accessibility. Lots of education providers will have these wonderfully worded (but sadly hollow) disability statements declaring how they don’t discriminate – and then they produce content in SCORM format – which just the process of opening can be an accessibility challenge for many, and once in – unless really well produced can be very hard to access via a screen reader, and many won’t work with the various inclusion tools available to learners.

I was horrified when WADA (the educational organisation responsible for the fight against drug taking in sport) recently updated their content (spending big bucks), and switched from Moodle based content to what can only be described as truly horrid and totally inaccessible SCORM based content – and a significant number of their users will be para athletes. When I discussed this with WADA – they weren’t very interested in my assessment of the situation, and told me they had employed a consultant who had advised them to go down the SCORM route for accessibility reasons! So a large global organisation like WADA was duped by a low quality consultant, misguiding them, and the mistake wasn’t realised until too late. This mis-understanding contributes to the SCORM issue, and I expect many other education providers have been badly adivsed by consultants to follow the well-trodden path, rather than create your own.

I was speaking with a colleague who for a living creates SCORMs using a widely used rapid authoring tool. The creators of this tool claim that the output can be made to be accessible – but to do so takes a lot of time and skill which most people won’t have (and it stops the tool from being a ‘rapid authoring tool’). When my colleague speaks to clients he offers them a basic rate for content creation, and then a higher rate to make the same content in a fully accessible format – his higher rate is typically 10 times that of the basic rate, as that is how much longer he reckons it takes him to make something fully accessible.  Unsurprisingly he doesn’t get many takers for the accessible versions, and I expect most people out there producing SCORMs don’t even know what they need to do to make things accessible, let alone have the time/inclination to do so. So just because the companies who make and sell these tools tell you that the output can be accessible and can meet various technical accessibility standards, does not me than it will.

Have we been here before?

If some think that what I am saying is ridiculous, then I only have to look back to the early 2000s when Flash was everywhere – learning content was being built in it, and even entire websites were flash based. These were totally inaccessible so I quickly came to the conclusion that Flash wasn’t suitable and we needed to stop using it. I came up against huge resistance back then (some organisations had entire teams of flash developers) and was given a hard time for suggesting something so outlandish. It took longer than I expected and we are grateful to Apple for forcing the issue but thankfully, Flash did disappear, and we were able to move forwards as a result. I hope/believe that we are at the same situation with SCORM. I know there will be resistance, the companies that make these tools are not going to like this, the companies that produce ‘off the shelf’ compliance training will struggle, and there are thousands of people whose main and only skill is creating content in this format who will have to retrain to update their skills. It also forces people to decide which beds to lie in – I personally went down the Moodle path, others will choose Blackboard, or Canvas or will choose other non-SCORM tools such as H5p or Xerte to specialise in – obviously people may choose the wrong path to follow, which will be a concern, but it will favour those who are adaptable and open minded.

Conclusion

SCORM will disappear at some point – the very nature of it, means the standards cannot be significantly changed, so it is currently on a slow and painful journey towards its own obsoletion, what I don’t know is how long that will take. Will it be slow like the demise of Flash, or will it be more rapid like the redundancy of film cameras, VHS or DVDs. I expect that I will be having these conversations with clients for at least the next 5 probably 10 years – but what I do know, is that the organisations that make the step forwards to move away from SCORMs sooner, will find themselves ahead of the game when the inevitable final happens.

In my next post, I will unpick some of the more practical steps of how to start this change in direction.

Image source: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/grim-reaper-death-scary-creepy-5535651/

#FELTAG – Considerations if not buying off the shelf resources

This is the 3rd post in a series on “FELTAG – To buy or not to buy resources“. In my last post, I looked at the advantages and disadvantages of buying off the shelf resources. In this post we will look at the advantages and disadvantages of not buying.

From a simplistic perspective, not buying resources is an easy option, as management can just ask teachers to do the extra work in their own time, at no extra cost to the organisation. Although this may seem a simple and convenient solution in this financially difficult time – the result will be low quality teaching and learning, teachers being off work ill, and many good teachers leaving the profession – none of which are good for the organisation long term.

Teachers creating resources

If teachers are being expected to create new content, then some time or financial reward for them will need to be found for this to be truly successful – so we shouldn’t look at the ‘Not buying resources’ option as a cheaper solution (as it probably won’t be) – we should make the decision based on the quality aspects and strategic benefits.

Strategically – working with teachers to develop resources, is a very important element of upskilling them to being competent digitally capable practitioners. So any cost invested in the development of resources with or by teachers – isn’t just creating resources but is forming part of the CPD requirement for those staff – if we think about this issue from this perspective alone, financially this becomes much more attractive.

Other benefits are:

1. Resources will be developed in line with your existing systems, infrastructure, house styles etc. so will ultimately become more embedded than buying off the shelf resources.
2. Resources will be easier to adapt in line with changes to curricula, subject knowledge, or changes to the devices being used to consume the content.
3. Resources won’t be as locked down, so will be easier to make more accessible, and adapt easier if required.
4. Resources can be tailored to the specific location of the organisation – e.g. an organisation teaching catering, can make reference to their own training kitchen. Organisations teaching travel and tourism that are based near the sea, can use resources based on local resorts – this can make a huge difference to learners as they make the transition from fully face to face learning, to blended learning.
5. With the right amount of support from learning technologists, and high quality staff development – it is possible for a good teacher with average levels of IT ability and a bit of time to generate adequate quality resources that would be comparable or even better than the commercial options (Many of the resources that I have developed with or for organisations are significantly better than the purchasable options).
6. There are loads of free learning resources or assets out there in terms of OER (Open Education Resources), Creative Commons images, YouTube videos, iTunes courses etc. so creating resources, is not about building everything from scratch – it is about locating, and evaluating existing content – then bringing this together in a sensible way that supports the learner through the journey. If a teacher is creating their own content, I would argue that they should only be creating a maximum of 25% – the other 75% should be free external resources, or adaptations of existing resources used in classroom sessions.
7. FELTAG is about a whole organisation approach to this area of work. By going down this route, the organisation as a whole will learn and develop and adapt as part of the journey.

Some of the disadvantages are:

1. For this to be successful this needs to be effectively managed and resourced, which may mean organisations taking a long and hard look at themselves and deciding if they have the management ability to do this – and if they don’t, how do they change the personnel so they can.
2. Developing resources takes time. When organisations were looking down the barrel of the gun trying to get things done by September 2015, time wasn’t a luxury at their disposal – the dropping of the 10% online being mandatory has given organisations more time (which I think is good) – but they still need to plan carefully, how and when and what order to develop courses. One option is for teachers to be given up front time to develop online resources/activities etc. before the course starts – another option is for the teacher to be given time as the course is running, and as long as they stay ahead of the students will be OK. Either way, you don’t often get things completely right the first time – you need to create something, use it with the learners, evaluate how it went, adapt accordingly etc. I believe that it takes about 3 iterations of this cycle before online elements of courses get to a really good standard.
3. Some teachers don’t have the skills required, and never will – this then creates a problem for management – do they allow those staff to go to pastures new? or do they carry on putting a greater workload on the teachers that can?
4. Creating resources in house requires an effective support team. Many organisations at the moment don’t have this (or enough staff in these teams) – and especially for smaller organisations, bringing in staff with the right range of skills can be challenging.

If organisations choose to create resources in house, they can help themselves by thinking of the procedure up front. e.g. who will do the work? If support teams are required, how are they managed and their time charged to the individual teams? What quality assurance procedures or processes will be in place, and most importantly who will manage the process for each different team or course?

Whereas I welcome comments on my blog posts, please don’t use this blog post as a way to either promote or criticise any particular companies or products. Any such comments I will delete.

The next and final blog post in this series, will be summarising the considerations covered in the previous 3 posts.

Image Source: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/875771

Using headphones to take photos with iPad or iPhone

I recently learnt a little known iPad/iPhone trick – that is really useful, especially for people using an iPad in a teaching and learning situation.

If you have a newish headphone set that has a volume control on the headphones – then this can be used to take a photo or video on the iPad. Pressing the volume down button on the headphones – will have the same effect as pressing the button on the screen when in the default camera app.

There are a few uses of using this technique as follows:

• If I am creating a video of myself (e.g. introducing a topic to learners) – I can start and stop the video with my headphones, which are out of site of the camera – without having to lean forward and (visibly) touch the screen.
• If I am carrying out movement analysis in a sports setting, and I have set my iPad up on a tripod (see previous blog post on this topic) – if I touch the screen to start the recording – I risk wobbling the set-up, which reduces the quality of the video. By using the headphones there is no wobble in the system.
• Again if the iPad is on a tripod and I am operating the taking of the photos/videos – by using the headphones, I can do this without having to look at the device – which means I can keep my full attention on the class. If I am pressing the button on the screen, I have to momentarily take my attention away from the class, potentially missing something important.
• If working outdoors in the cold, it is possible to operate the camera with gloves on.
• If working in certain environments such as a workshop, kitchen, farmyard – it is possible to operate the camera even without fully clean hands. At the end of the session you can wipe the controls of the headphones clean.
• If working with disabled learners, the processing of holding the device, and looking at the screen, and pointing in the right direction, and then taking the photo can be tricky for some, often resulting in movement of the device as the on-screen button is pressed. By using the headphones (and possibly a tripod) we can reduce this effect. This won’t work for all – some will find the on-screen button easier to manage, but others will find the headphones option easy to control.

There will be many other uses that I haven’t listed here (maybe people will comment if they can think of any).

Adding subtitles to YouTube videos using CaptionTube

YouTube is a wonderful resource, it works on just about all internet enabled devices, it hardly ever goes wrong, it is easy to use and although there is a lot of low quality rubbish on there (in my opinion), there is also huge amounts of really useful high quality videos that we can use in education to enhance our teaching and learning practices.

A feature of YouTube that many don’t know about, is the auto-captioning option – in other words YouTube creates a transcript of the video without you having to do anything. If you are watching a video on the YouTube page and you want to see the captions, then there is a button below the video (currently to the right of the where it says ‘add to’) which is the transcript button – this brings up the transcript as a timeline below the videos and automatically advances with the video. This can be great for learners that have a disability (e.g. are deaf), but can also be really useful to find a key point within a video.

For example I often use short sections of the excellent TED talk video of Ken Robinson talking about schools killing creativity. If I want to locate a certain section within that video, I use the automatic captions that appear below it to locate the section that I want.

Because the transcripts are computer generated, they do contain errors – and depending on the clarity of the voice and the background noise of the video will determine the accuracy of the transcript. For some reason my voice never does well with automated speech to text systems, including YouTube.

However if you do want to override the automatic captions that YouTube creates with your own ones, then this is very easy to do – and for this I use a service called CaptionTube This is a simple system where you sign in (using a Google Account) you locate the video you want to caption (which could be your own or someone elses) and then you play the video pausing it at intervals to add your captions. If the video is your own, then you can add the captions to it there and then, if it isn’t your video then you can send the transcript to them to see if they want to upload it.

The following video (by John Skidgel) introduces the basics of CaptionTube.

Here is a video of mine that I captioned using this method. This took me 12 minutes in total from opening the page to my captions appearing on the video on YouTube.

Adding Captions to a video is a simple way to increase the accessibility of a resource, as well as potentially increasing the number of people that see your video, as the contents of the captions will get picked up by search engines (if the video is set to being public and listed).

Using a colour combination chart when creating resources

In my early days of teaching, and just as I was starting to get my head around the tools that were available to me (PowerPoint) – I was faced with a multitude of colours that I could choose as background or font. The problem is that certain colours don’t go very well together. Some are obvious – such as having dark text on a dark background, or light text on a light background (but I am still suprised how I often I see this mistake made), and others are less obvious like using green and red or blue and red.

Then I created a very simple tool that helped me when choosing colours, and saved myself time in the process. I created a grid where I had a variety of combinations of backgrounds, and fonts in each of the different colour combinations – by glancing at this, I can then see which colour combinations work better than others, without having to keep changing the settings until I get something that works. This grid was stuck to the wall next to my desk.

I also used this when I had a student with a visual impairment in my class. I took the grid to him, and asked him which colour combination he found best – he looked at the grid and quickly said black text on an orange background. So I quickly changed the colour schemes of my presentations for that unit (which because I had used the Master Slide was very quick to do) – and as a result of that (and other simple changes I made to my teaching) – in my sessions he didn’t need to have the note taker that he needed in all the other lessons he attended – which for him, was a wonderful experience (as well as saving the College lots of money).

The grid (which I still use) is available for others if they want to use, and can be located on my website towards the bottom of http://www.a6training.co.uk/resources_powerpoint.php. Although I originally produced this for the use of PowerPoint, this works with any technology where you have the option to change colours, and can be a really useful way of increasing accessibility of learning resources.

The video below introduces this chart.

A good practice guide for PowerPoint

Many people think that PowerPoint is old hat – there are lots of negative posts about the bad use of PowerPoint, and I have noticed that many organisation are no longer offering PowerPoint training to staff as there is a belief that everyone knows about PowerPoint nowadays. Sadly this is not the case; I regularly have to endure really bad PowerPoint presentations – often from people that are very high up in organisations promoting either the use of technology or quality in education – yet their PowerPoint use is appalling.

A few years ago when I was running PowerPoint training regularly, people often asked me for some guidance information about what they should or shouldn’t do when using PowerPoint, and so I pulled together a document, detailing the things that I do, when I am using PowerPoint. Most of the considerations are based on straight forward good teaching and learning practice, and things that make the presentation more accessible to disabled learners. My document isn’t intended as a step by step ‘how to guide’ (as this would then become obsolete every time a different version of PowerPoint came out) – instead it says what should be done and why. This means that this document could be used for any presentation medium not just PowerPoint.

I struggled to think of a good name for my document, so in the end I just called it ‘The Dave Foord Guide to PowerPoint’ – simply because that is what it is – it is the set of rules/practices that I personally follow when using PowerPoint.

The guide is available for others to download, print and reuse from the PowerPoint section of my website http://www.a6training.co.uk/resources_powerpoint.php

If any organisations would like me to run training for their staff on the effective use of presentation tools such as PowerPoint, then please contact me, my details are at http://www.a6training.co.uk/contact.php

Below is a short video introducing ‘The Dave Foord Guide to PowerPoint’

The accessibility benefits of using audio in teaching and learning

My last 2 posts in this blog, have looked at the use of audio within teaching and learning as follows:

• Top tips for sharing audio files with learners.
• Using meta data when using audio files with learners.

In this post I want to think about some of the accessibility benefits and issues for this area of work. Firstly (and sadly) a lot of people use accessibility as an excuse not to use audio more, often stating that they don’t want to use audio in case they have a deaf learner in their class.

This is a commonly misunderstood area – as (although it may sound silly) many deaf learners actually find audio content really useful. Agreed, if someone has no hearing then audio is of no use to them, but many people that are identified as being deaf have some hearing, and many of them will have hearing aids that will amplify noise so that they can hear something. For these learners accessing a lecture is often difficult as the hearing aids will pick up all noise in the room, including the lecturers voice, mutterings from other learners, the hum of the strip lighting, the squeaking of pens etc. making it very hard to hear. The use of induction loops has helped this issues to a certain extent, but still isn’t ideal, as you hear the tutors contribution but not necessarily what other learners say. If however as part of the process an audio file has been produced summarising the key learning points (and remember you can always get the learners to do this – see my post on ipadio) – a deaf learner can in a quiet environment (e.g. their bedroom) listen to this – altering the volume accordingly so that they can hear it through an ordinary audio player and pick up some extremely valuable information that would otherwise have been missed. With this in mind, when I record audio, I amplify the recording slightly (which is very easy to do with things like audacity) – as it is always possible to turn the volume down, but it isn’t possible to turn the volume up above its maximum.

Another question that I am often asked is “Do we need to provide a transcript for all the audio recordings we make?”. This question again is another barrier (excuse) that stops people using audio, as the time to create such a transcript puts them off.

Personally, my interpretation of the law (and I am not a lawyer – so do not take this as legal advice) is as follows:

The law (Equality Act 2010) states that

1. We have to make reasonable adjustment.
2. We have an anticipatory duty, to be prepared for a variety of disabilities and associated possible adaptations.

So – what does that mean? Part 1 is simple – yes if we are using audio and we have a learner who states that they need a transcription then we need to provide it.

Part 2 – is more tricky. Many people interpret this as we should produce the transcripts upfront, but this doesn’t make sense to me, as if we followed that logic through it would mean for every session someone delivers, they would have to turn up with their resources printed on a variety of colours of paper, in different fonts sizes and fonts, and in audio format, Braille format, videoed as British Sign Language etc. This to me wouldn’t be a reasonable expectation.

So I don’t automatically provide transcripts, however what I have done with a few organisations that I have worked with is ensure that there is a mechanism in place to create such transcripts if required (e.g. if a student asks for one) – very quickly (this I think is a reasonable adjustment). Many people ask me if there is a technological solution to converting audio to text, and sadly there isn’t a fully reliable one, so my solution would be to just employ a very fast typing temp, who could listen to the audio files, and transcribe them. The problem here is many organisation would then argue over whose budget would pay for this temp (e.g. is it central, is it the teaching team(s), is it learner support). Personally I think it should be a central budget – as the key here would be getting it done quickly and the organisation should have a procedure in place to do this if a student requests it. I am aware that most organisations don’t, which is a shame as it would be a very simple mechanism to put in place.

So in summary – we should not avoid using audio on accessibility grounds, instead we should embrace it, if we can make sure that audio recordings are clear and recorded at above average volume then great. If we do produce transcripts up front then brilliant but of not possible then having a mechanism in place to create them should suffice.

Adding screen tips to an image in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint

If you have a word document that contains images – there is a simple way to add an element of interactivity to it, without having to alter the appearance of the document in any way.

The basic principle is to have an image (e.g. a photo) and as the learner moves their mouse over the image – it provides a screen tip which could name or describe that part of the image. This is a very basic form of interactivity, but it is very easy to do and is a good starting point for someone if they have existing Words based resources.

This technique can be used to improve the accessibility of a resource, (in that you are providing additional information to the learning – without cluttering the screen with too much information) or to add an element of differentiation (the learner that is struggling to understand the image, can hover their mouse to get more information).

This technique is part of the JISC TechDis accessibility essential series – and can be found at http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/AccessibilityEssentials/2007/AE2/modules/authoring%20accessible%20docs/use%20of%20screen%20tips.html

The following video shows how to do this.

In this video, the hyperlink points to the top of the document as that is where the image was. If you are using an image part way down the document, you can either insert a bookmark next to the image to link to, or give the image a heading (and use the styles to make sure it is a heading) and link to that.

You can also use this technique in PowerPoint by just linking to the slide that you are on, as shown in this video.

‘Flipping eL’ – ‘The Flipped Classroom’ – part 4 – increasing accessibility

This is the 4th blog post in a series on the topic of the ‘Flipped Classroom’. In the previous post I identified the possible benefits that this model could bring in terms of widening participation, with one area being possible benefits to disabled students, which I want to unpick further here.

Not all disabled learners are going to prefer this model, but there are going to be many that may. The commonest disability that we are likely to encounter within education is dyslexia, and if I broaden this out there are 3 categories:

1. Those that are diagnosed.
2. Those that aren’t diagnosed yet.
3. Those who have dyslexic tendencies without being officially recognised.

Organisations will know how many of the first group they have, but we have no idea how many of the other 2 groups that there will be. The advantage of the flipped classroom is this may help these learners without them having something different (and the associated stigma) to the rest of the class.

So – how may this help? Education discriminates against dyslexic learners because education has an over reliance on the importance of language – the very thing that dyslexics find most challenging. Many dyslexics are above average intelligence, and they develop coping strategies to overcome this discrimination. For many the coping strategy is based on ‘getting through the lesson’ and they have to spend a lot of their effort just making sense of various forms of information and the way it is presented, rather than trying to develop a deep understanding of the topic being taught. If we have a flipped classroom scenario – the learner can use tools like text to speech, coloured overlays, onscreen reading bars etc to help them access the information. If any content is video or audio the learner can pause, rewind etc. giving them the extra time needed to make meaningful notes – rather than having to work at the pace the tutor has set.

If a learner accesses the information up front, they can then come to the seminar session prepared to enter into high level discussion with their peers.

In my first post in the series, I mentioned how a visually impaired learner may benefit, and the logical reasons are the same – they take control of their support needs and adaptations, they work at the pace that is best for them, and in an environment that they find most conducive to learning. Similarly if a learner has a hearing impairment, they can study in an environment (probably one without background noise) that is best suited to them. One issue that is interesting here, is many educators think that audio (including video) is not going to be good for someone that is deaf. If someone has no hearing then this would be true, however there are many people that are deaf that have some hearing, and make use of hearing aids to amplify sounds to give them some hearing. For these people – listening to a lecturer speaking in a lecture theatre with the sound of the air conditioning, projector, students coughing, squeaking of pens taking notes etc is very hard, even if an induction loop is used. However – if the same content is provided as audio or video, which they can listen to in their own environment and using technology to amplify the sound to the best level for them – again with the ability to pause and rewind bits they didn’t fully hear is very useful.

Of course there will be many disabled learners who won’t prefer the ‘flipped classroom’ ideology – but the key here is the notion of choice that I identified in my second post in the series. The learners who prefer the flipped route sign up for courses running it, for those that don’t they sign up for an alternative course. The challenge here will be for the people advising the students, to have the confidence and knowledge to advise the students correctly, without introducing a prejudice that ‘because they are disabled the flipped classroom won’t work for them’.

If some organisations do get the flipped principle working, and the right students choose those courses, we have the potential for some disabled learners to be able to study without having to declare their disability (and the associated stigma) and that to me is a very powerful and exciting position.

The image below shows a student using technology to invert the colours to high contrast and increase the text size.

Taken from http://farm5.static.flickr.com/3073/3050414114_f2ae8bb229_b.jpg on 2012-5-14
Original URL – http://www.flickr.com/66606673@N00/3050414114/ created on 2008-10-20 10:43:05
cobalt123CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

‘Flipping eL’ – ‘The Flipped Classroom’ – part 3 – Widening participation?

This is my third entry in my series on the notion of the ‘flipped classroom’. There are many other sources of information on the pedagogical benefits that this model may bring (and similarly there are many posts that counter these benefits), but in this post I want to look at one area that hasn’t been covered in as much detail, and that is using the idea of the flipped classroom to widen participation.

I mentioned in my first post that this model of teaching does not reduce costs by reducing the teachers hours – however there is a potential time saving for the learners. Let’s think of a ‘possible’ taught session running from 9.00am to 10.00am in the morning. You get into the classroom, the students drift in, a few are late due to buses being held up, queues on the ring road, etc. You turn on the computer and projector – it takes a few minutes to warm up and login. You locate your PowerPoint presentation…..10 minutes into the lesson you take the register, you then start the teaching proper at 9.15, but because so many missed last weeks session you have to recap more than planned….During the session you set tasks and activities, and you have to give the students time to do these. Some students are quicker than others so finish and then get bored, others are slower so don’t get to finish in time….. you spend time dealing with classroom management issues rather than the teaching and learning… and then start to wind up at 9.50 so you can be out of the room in time to get to your next lesson across the campus that starts at 10.00am!

In my opinion, when you deliver face to face teaching, if you can get a ratio of more than 60% quality teaching and learning time you are doing well. If we then take into account the fact that students often have ‘wasted’ time in between lessons, and if they are reliant on public transport or lifts from others, they may have dead time at the start and of the day as well. All in all – if we look critically at the model of classroom based education – it isn’t a very efficient model. In the past this didn’t matter – but with the cost of education increasing, and the need for people to work alongside their study this is becoming an influencing factor.

So where does the ‘flipped classroom’ come into this. I believe that the same 1 hour lecture that I described earlier could be repackaged so the delivery element of it, could probably be delivered in about 15 – 20 minutes. If the students accessed say 3 or 4 of these before coming into the organisation for a quality seminar type session, where the tutor could unpick some of the more complex issues, the skills could be applied, and managed discussion takes place – you then have a model that is far more time efficient for the learner, as well as making it cost effective for learners from further afield, who want to study at your organisation, but previously couldn’t because of the daily travel or accommodation costs.

Another area where the flipped classroom could widen participation is for learners with disabilities – I will unpick this element in another blog post just on this topic.

Many organisations that are seriously looking into the use of the ‘flipped classroom’ are going down the road of changing their current teaching models to this idea. There are 2 possibilities here (and excuse my gross over simplification here)

• The organisation is already providing high quality provision – in which case why change, and is there a risk that the quality may drop?
• The organisation is currently providing low quality provision, and they see this as a way of resolving these issues – in which case I would expect the quality of the flipped outcome to be equally low.

So here is my idea. Rather than organisations completely changing the way that they deliver existing courses – instead take one of their courses that is currently being successfully run, and look to run an additional cohort via the ‘flipped classroom’ ideology alongside their existing provision, thus allowing learners to choose which model they want to follow. As well as potentially widening the customer base of ones provision, you also end up with potential lessons that can be used if there is an unforeseen closure of the building due to snow, flooding, swine flu, Icelandic volcanoes etc. You also would have a wider pool of resources that the face to face lecturer could call upon in their teaching, and if a learner misses a few weeks due to illness, then there is a potential catch up mechanism in place to get them back on track.

The arguments that I am presenting here, sound very similar to the discussions that I have been having for the last 12 or so years around the benefits of e-learning – the difference is, that with e-learning, organisations seemed to get stuck with an ‘all or nothing’ mindset – in other words, the belief that if a learner chose to learn via e-learning they were doing so because they wanted all of their learning in that way with no or minimal face to face contact with the tutors. What the flipped classroom model is doing is creating a better mixed mode of delivery – which has always been my preferred methodology.

To some the ‘flipped classroom’ is just a fancy new term for things that people have done before – and many think that it is a passing ‘fad’ that will soon to be replaced with the next big buzz word. Both options I think are possible – but whilst it does have currency and is being discussed by people, I hope that it creates an opportunity for organisations to look critically at what they do, to start to act more like businesses and think about their customer (and future customer) base and if we get it right, there is a huge potential that we can improve the quality of our provision, just by widening the participation.