Board 45: Teach-Flipped: A Faculty Development MOOC on How to Teach Flipped

The objective of this NSF project was to help faculty learn to flip their classes. What started out as a faculty development program designed for local STEM faculty quickly expanded to include faculty around the country and the world, across a wide variety of disciplines and K-12 teachers as well. The program included three modules – backwards design applied to the flipped class [1], creating online materials (video lectures), and active learning strategies for the face-toface classroom. These modules were taught in a variety of different ways for different audiences including in-person workshops, flipped semi-in person workshops, and completely online massive open online course (MOOC)s. The online MOOCs are now taught each semester by our Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence through Canvas.Net. We observed several interesting things as we helped such a broad variety of faculty work through the basic ideas of flipping a class. The richness this broad community provided was observed in the discussion forums, and we identified a variety of specific concerns that were in some cases general to all disciplines (for instance, “How can I find the time to make these course changes?”) and in others limited to specific disciplines or circumstances (for instance, how can I explain to a nurse how to insert an IV online or how can I use this type of pedagogy in a K12 class where the students have limited internet at home). We found that people who signed up for the course did so for a variety of reasons, not all of which were directly related to wanting to immediately prepare to flip their courses. Far more participants were simply beginning their exploration of this and other new teaching strategies. For many, the online discussion forum proved a valuable conduit to explore these concerns with peers (many of whom had substantial experience to share on the matter), and with the professionals who were running the course.