Flip it. Flip it good.

As I mentioned, my focus this week is on creating some outside of class resources for students so that we can spend time workshopping exercises and discussing Logic in class, while still covering a lot of necessary ground.  I'm using some ideas from the "flipped" classroom approach--asking students to do some of the work outside of class (in addition to reading their text), leaving room for more active work inside of class.  That means very little lecture on my part.

Here's what class looked like today:  students spent about 10-15 minutes workshopping their weekly written exercises (due today) in small groups.  Owen, my brilliant teaching assistant, and I walked around the groups, answering questions.  I allow students to change answers based on workshops in the interest of giving them immediate feedback.  Students then, still in their groups, were responsible for writing an example of part of today's topic on the board, and teaching that concept to the rest of the group.  Our material this week is informal fallacies--fairly easy and interesting, but a lot of vocabulary.

In past semesters, I would teach informal fallacies primarily by lecturing on the types and then looking at examples together as a whole class.  I like that approach for obvious reasons:  I had control of the class material, I could rest easy knowing that students were at least *exposed* to the ideas (because I said them!), and I knew that we'd get all of the ground covered.  What I didn't know was whether students were tuned in and learning.  Using my approach today left me sure that most students were tuned in (if they weren't, it was obvious), though I had a lot less control over the content.

To allow myself to rest more easily at night, I've created some online resources to accommodate all the lecturing I used to do.  I've made three quizzes, so far, for students to enjoy outside of class.  I'm making these optional (ungraded, though I can see who does them).  Students who do them will get immediate feedback on how well they're grasping the material, which is what I hoped to accomplish by looking at examples during a lecture in class.

The proof will, of course, be in the pudding.  That pudding will be dished out next week in our first exam.  And yes, that's almost as enjoyable to me as having DEVO songs going through my head.