via GIPHY
In Chapter 11 of Piskurich’s book
about instructional design, I was interested in the flipped classroom portion
(p. 453). Being a classroom teacher with
students who have one to one devices, I have been curious about flipping my
classroom. My understanding is that in
this type of classroom setting students do the opposite of what they would usually do in
the traditional classroom. In a flipped classroom,
students view lectures, watch videos, and read at home prior to attending class. Then in the
classroom, students participate in discussions or projects. One could describe the flipped classroom as an environment where the homework is done at school and the school work (lectures or videos) is done
at home. I have experienced the flipped classroom as part of professional development offered over the
summer in my school district. For our
PD, we had to view videos and complete a science notebook prior to attending
training. By completing these assignments at home, it allowed us to spend valuable time in discussing how we might use some of the tools and techniques effectively in our
classroom. Learning is a social activity,
so I enjoyed learning from other teachers and discussing how we would implement the PD skills into our classrooms. Throughout a week of training, I gained essential knowledge and skills to take back to my classroom. Through this type of PD, the participants, including myself, developed the background
knowledge about strategies and methods for teaching science through hands on experiences. This allowed us to spend more time discussing and experimenting with less time spent in lecture or reading. Furthermore, we spent more time actively engaged in meaningful, hands on learning experiences that we could take back to the classroom to our students.
For me, Piskurich offered another important tip about developing effective instructional design. In Chapter 8 of his book, he mentions software. I found it interesting that he does not expect an instructional designer to reinvent the wheel (so to speak). He mentions that there are some “really great packages out there that can help you mightily” as an instructional designer (p. 354). This has caused me think about my own training content. My first thought was that everything had to be reinvented or started from scratch which seemed like an overwhelming task in developing content. Yet, in his book, he conveys the idea that is permissible to use software in your design as long as it “matches the way you like to do instructional design” (p.354). This could be helpful to the instructional designer, especially, when planning multiple trainings across many discipline areas with various types of learners and learning environments.
Throughout
his book, Piskurich never forgets the importance of the learner, their needs, and how they learn best. Although, he presents a systematic way to design
instruction, he focuses on ways to engage the trainee in the process of active
learning. He has included activities and game ideas which could be added into training
sessions making them more appealing and engaging to the learner (p. 224). As a teacher who plans classroom
instruction, I also seek to include meaningful activities and games which engage my students in
the learning process. These activities
and games are always planned, purposeful, and student centered. In addition, they match my instructional objectives. Just as any great teacher does, Piskurich never forgets to focus on the student or trainee first and he emphasizes the importance of great objectives. My belief is that these are key to great instructional design.
Works Cited
Flipped Learning Organization. (2016). What is flipped learning? Retrieved from http://flippedlearning.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/FLIP_handout_FNL_Web.pdf
Piskurich, G. (2015). Doing it right: Development. Rapid Instructional Design: Learning ID Fast and Right (pp. 203-261). Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley.
Flipped Classroom Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H4RkudFzlc
