Flip teaching is a format of education which reverses the roles of homework and classroom teaching.
The traditional pattern of education has been to have classroom lectures, in which the teacher explains a topic, followed by homework, in which the student does exercises.
In flip teaching, the student first studies the topic by him or herself, typically using video lessons. In the classroom, the student then tries to apply the knowledge by solving problems and doing practical work. The role of the teacher is then to tutor the student when they become stuck, rather than to impart the initial lesson.
Use of technology by teachers to increase student engagement and motivation.
Focus on student-centric learning with the teacher only providing directions as to how to complete the experiential activities.
Students interacting with each other and the content much more than the teacher.
Though not labelled initially as “flip teaching,” this is really what Prof. Garver does at Central Michigan University and what was discussed in a previous post in this blog. Garver, who uses lecture capture software to record his lectures and then assigns them to students to listen to outside of class,“… gave up lecturing in the classroom (because) he was tired of having to choose between introducing ideas and letting students try putting them into practice. There was never enough time for both.”
iTunesU is used by many law schools to host videos and podcasts of lectures . (UChicago, Yale Law, NYLS, Suffolk U law, CUNY School of Law, Harvard Law to name a few.) These videos/podcasts are available to students to watch/listen to outside the classroom.
If you search on YouTube, you will find that Aaron Dewald, Associate Director of the Center for Innovation in Legal Education at the University of Utah College of Law, has posted 11 videos on Cyberlaw, 23 videos on Evidence and 37 videos on Contracts (see example above.). These are also accessible to students as a supplement to their law school curriculum.
The goal of Michele Pistone’s LegalEd website is to offer video lectures that can be assigned by law professors so that they can use class time for interactive activities and formative assessments.
In this blog post, Craig Forcese, Vice Dean & Associate Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa, recaps the “Flipping the Classroom” experiment that he conducted in his Administrative Law class this past semester. I highly recommend reading all his previous posts:
So will I do it again? Yes. Will I expand to other courses? Yes. Indeed, some of my lessons from this large format class will now be deployed in my seminars — a venue which has always been active learning based.
Do I recommend it? In a heartbeat. Will it be everyone’s cup of tea? No. Should it exist in every course? No. Part of what might make it effective is novelty. But more than that, there should always be a few courses law students can actually shuffle through. Active learning is more work for students (although many of them will find that it true because they are revising well-worn time management skills developed in a passive setting).
Is it a panacea to all that ails legal education? Of course not. It is a brick in a larger edifice of reform. Do I think that brick should be mortared into the fabric of my law school? Absolutely. Personally, I believe that the law school that gets this one right — the mix of active and passive — will be a place to contend with.
At Albany Law School, many professors have been narrating their PowerPoint presentations using Adobe Presenter and then posting them as pdfs (with audio) in the course’s TWEN site. These recorded presentations are assigned as homework. In class, the professors now have more time for discussion and assessments. This is another example of “Flipped Teaching.”
As you see from this post, there are lots of innovative ways to flip your class. But as Eric Mazur states: “It’s not about the technology, it’s about the pedagogy.”
Could “flip teaching” be successful in law school? The answer is “You’ll never know until you try.”
CALI lessons are often automatically added to your TWEN course site.
These can be used by law students as they prepare for final exams.
However, if you want to track student lesson usage, LessonLink is the feature of CALI that allows you to do this.
Here are the instructions for creating and using a LessonLink:
Login to http://cali.org with your CALI faculty account (you will need your school authorization code if you haven’t set up your account yet).
Click on ‘CALI LessonLink’ in the right menu.
Click the ‘Create a LessonLink’ link (also found here)
Fill in your course name, semester, and then choose the CALI topic under which you will find the lesson(s) you wish to assign. Check the ones you want to assign.
Click create LessonLinks.
Use copy and paste to send the entire LessonLink URL(s) to students. You can send it to them by email or place it in your TWEN site.
Check who has run this lesson and scoring details by clicking the same ‘CALI LessonLink’ link, then Current LessonLinks. (Past semesters’ LessonLink details are found under the LessonLink Archives tab.)
LessonLinks are organized into groups called courses. After creating a course with one or more links, you can add more LessonLinks to the course by following the directions in your Current LessonLinks administration page.
Students must run the lesson by clicking the unique URL you gave to them. They cannot simply browse to the CALI website and find the lesson in the CALI Library of Lessons. Please make this clear to your students to avoid confusion.
Students will also need the student authorization code if they have not yet creatd a CALI account.
On April 17, 2013, Michele Pistone, Professor of Law and Director, Clinic for Asylum, Refugee and Emigrant Services (CARES) at Villanova University School of Law, spoke to the Albany Law School faculty on the topic of “How Emerging Innovations Will Disrupt Legal Education.”
Her engaging presentation began with a clip from 1994 of Bryant Gumble and Katie Couric from the Today Show debating the pronunciation of a mysterious keyboard symbol, the”@” symbol. From there and Bob Dylan (“The Times They Are A Changin”), she reminisced about buying books and records at neighborhood stores, seeing movies in the theaters, and when TV shows only played once a week, and if you missed them, you had to hope they’d be rerun during the summer.
Yes, this has all changed. Books and newspapers are now digital. TV shows and movies can be watched at anytime and on computers and phones. These changes are result of innovations which have created a new world.
However, this is the only world that our students know!! They were born digital.
As a result, our students are visual, connected, relate to one another through technology, have an abundance of information that is available at any time from any place. They are used to convenience, speed, multi-tasking, immediate feedback and working together on projects, collaborating, sharing, and creating.
So the important question that Prof. Pistone raised was: In light of these changes, have law schools changed enough?
And her answer was: “Law schools have not changed much in the last 100 years.”
K-16 education has been changing. We have the addition of MOOCS (massive open online courses); Khan Academy which offers videos and quizzes that can being used alone or to flip the classroom. TED ED which makes videos for use in high school – students watch videos online for homework and then can come into class ready to do active problem based learning (thus “flipping the classroom”).
Prof. Pistone recommended reading the book Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clay Christensen. In it, he introduces the key concepts of sustaining technologies (those that improve the performance of established products) and disruptive technologies. Although “disruptive technologies” result in worse product performance in the short term, they are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient to use (Skype being an example.) So we need to adapt to them.
A study conducted by the Department of Education found that blended learning (a combination of online and face-to-face instruction) obtained better results for students and than either face-to-face or completely online learning. This is something to keep in mind.
So what is next for law schools?
Prof. Pistone recommends focusing on:
What we teach – in light of our changing, globalizing, interdisciplinary world
How we teach — to cover a wide range of competencies and reach different learning styles
How we assess what students are learning – supplementing the final summative exam with formative assessment
How we signal to others a student’s competencies
Lastly, Prof. Pistone introduced her new project called LegalED. LegalED is a web-based platform that will host teaching materials for legal education. The materials will include:
short videos made for internet viewing
problems and exercises
assessment tools
This online platform of teaching materials (esp. the short videos) can be used to supplement law school and to “flip” the classroom.
Prof. Pistone’s presentation concluded with a lively discussion by faculty on law school competencies that cannot be taught online (such as empathy), mapping competencies to the teaching process, mastery/adaptive learning, bar exam…
If interested, here is the video recording of Michele Pistone’s Tedx presentation, which focuses on the future of higher education:
I am really sick today–gotten worse as the day has progressed. I’m wondering if, rather than cancelling my Contracts class on Thursday (at 11 a.m.), I can teach it from home via Adobe Connect.**
So I asked her for the URL of the Class Site, connected a laptop to the projector in the classroom, hooked up a microphone and VOILA.
The professor showed her PowerPoint slides and the students took notes and asked questions.
And no one caught the professor’s germs!!!
**(The professor said that she was inspired by a Verizon commercial that she saw while watching the NFC championship game. It showed a kid who was sick attending school via a robot.)
As the third year of our distance learning option at Albany Law School draws to a close, we look at the end-of-the-year survey results in order to prepare for year 4.
When asked “What did you like most about taking this online course?” students responded:
Being able to interact with other students in the discussions, as well as being able to do the work at home.
I actually had to read everything so it turned out to be a great learning experience. I would love to take more online courses during law school.
The flexibility of being able to complete assignments anytime up until the due date.
The materials were interesting. The online interactive format forces students to make comments- which makes it more interactive than a traditional class where students tend to sit silent. I enjoyed seeing other students’ take on the material- it was informative and sometimes provided a different perspective.
I liked submitting my assignments online and at convenient times of the day.
The subject topics for the discussions & wiki assignments were very interesting.
All of the students replied that they would recommend offering this course again in the on-line format and that they thought that TWEN worked well as a course management system for an online class.
So this was a very successful year with distance learning. Year 4, however, will undergo some changes…a new professor…more synchronous options due to changes in the NYS Bar requirements for distance learning.
This past semester, one of Albany Law School‘s professors, Keith Hirokawa, taught a class on Sustainability & the Law via webstream for Professor Jonathon Rosenbloom at Drake Law School.
In his post on the Environmental Law Prof blog, Keith notes:
I found the technology surprisingly effective… Students are, or need to be, comfortable with today’s communication technologies and the accompanying opportunities, and we should be willing to bring technology into the classroom.
Ultimately, the distance separating me from the Drake students may have fostered more engaging and open dialogue on the issues presented because of the newness (and uncertain boundaries) of the relationship…
This was a great experience for me, and I learned a great deal about remote guest speakers, teaching in general, and my own scholarship…
Technology has enabled students in law school classes to learn from experts and in this case, nothing more than a computer, a webcam and an Internet connection was needed.
Last Friday, I attended the CELT conference hosted by Albany Law School. The focus of the conference was ”emerging models for curricular and structural reform.”
David Thomson, the author of Law School 2.0, was the keynote speaker Thursday evening. His presentation is posted here.
I was hoping to hear about innovative uses of technology in the classroom and also witness the use of technology by the presenters and I did see the following:
One presenter Skyped in because she was unable to attend in person
Posted by Darlene 
