5 ways to address student resistance in the flipped classroom — from ractuslearning.com by Barbi Honeycutt

“Students forced to take major responsibility for their own learning go through some or all of the steps psychologists associate with trauma and grief:  Shock, Denial, Strong emotion, Resistance and withdrawal, Struggle and exploration, Return of confidence, and Integration and success” (Felder & Brent, 1996, p. 43.)

 

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

In these [active learning] environments, you’re not going to see a classroom where students are listening to the teacher’s voice as he or she presents information from the textbook. Instead, you’ll see students engaged in a task and solving a problem. They are often working groups. The room is noisy since the students are discussing, solving, and testing ideas.  The teacher’s voice is one of many.

The flipped classroom is one type of active learning environment.  It’s dynamic, it’s engaging, and it’s “messy” since students are actively engaging in higher level thinking skills during class time.  It requires us to change the way we think about teaching and learning.

It’s also hard.

It’s hard because flipped classrooms require a new set of skills for both the instructor and the students.  Just as we (the instructors) are learning how to create these flipped learning experiences for our students, our students are also learning how to thrive in these new learning environments. And this is why we might see more student resistance in active learning environments. Just as Felder and Brent explain in the opening quote, it’s almost like our students are moving through the stages from shock and withdrawal to confidence and success.

 

 

Also see:

New Challenges to Active Learning Initiatives — from er.educause.edu

Key Takeaways

  • Year two of Case Western Reserve University’s Active Learning Fellowship program supported the first year’s evidence of success in using active learning techniques in active learning classrooms.
  • Unexpectedly, active learning techniques applied in large classes in regular classrooms proved unpopular with students, as expressed in surveys and focus groups at the end of the semester.
  • The challenges teased out of the data indicated additional factors influencing active learning success and guided modifications to year three of the Active Learning Fellowship faculty selection process.