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The best aspects of this course included being guided through the process, being provided with the many options for delivering a flipped unit and exploring the technologies. I appreciated the warnings of what to avoid and pitfalls to be aware of. I have been immensely encouraged by the positive feedback of the students who trialled the lessons.
Iris Bramley
Willoughby Girls High School, July 2018

Course Overview


​A quality, 4-month, online, guided learning journey

This is a self-paced course, and is therefore accessible 24/7.

Have you been frustrated by lost lessons and student absences? Been dabbling with blended learning units but it's all a bit too difficult and messy? Wish there was a better way to have students interact online and utilise social learning principles? A 'yes' to any of these questions, means this course is for you. Create an extra "you" in the classroom. 

This 16-week online course caters for high school mathematics teachers who want to create, then implement a flipped or blended unit of work. (Refer to the course prerequisites below).
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Flipped learning/blended learning allows students to access ‘teaching segments’ in their own time thereby freeing up class time for collaboration and exploration. However, this is not necessarily about students ‘watching lectures at home’. Rather, the Flipped-mastery model is encouraged where teachers create comprehensive, student-centred, online units of work for students to access both during and after lessons. As the title suggests, participants will create a flipped/blended unit of work trial the unit with students and report on their implementation experience.

Additional skills taught: 
Sourcing videos, creating instructional (screencast) videos and delivering content online.

Technology:
The course recommends various software but will cater for a range of technologies. Examples of how to create formative assessment and feedback opportunities using blended, online units are provided. The course caters for computer-based technologies as well as iPads, and Tablet-PCs.

Pre-requisites: 
Participants need to be competent with technology i.e. be able to manage multiple programs and windows simultaneously, readily adapt, learn and troubleshoot new software. Participants do not need to be advanced users of technology, rather, competent users.

Course Modules

​​1. Overview / Getting Started ( 15 min )
Participants are welcomed to the course and 'meet' the presenter/facilitator. The course requirements are explained. Participants introduce themselves via an introductory post.  

2. A Flipped Mathematics Classroom? Why and How   ( 30 min )
The flipped mathematics classroom explained. Some advantages, issues and obstacles to be aware of. Examples of flipped units are provided.

3. Student-centred learning ( 30 min )
Arguably, the most important aspect of the flipped classroom is the fact that it promotes student-centred learning. This module looks at the issues involved with student-centred learning, and what effective classroom management looks like for mathematics teachers who encourage a more student-centred learning environment. ​

4. Sourcing and sharing quality media ( 1 Hr )
After exploring different types of mathematics videos, participants are coordinated to search, find and share several, quality instructional videos resulting in each participant gaining multiple, quality videos across multiple topics.

5. Preparation - Creating instructional screencasts  ( 1 hr )
This module is an overview of the planning process required for creating screencast videos and includes the pros and cons of producing ‘scribbling’ videos as well as some example snippets from videos created by past participants.​

6. Screen capture options(30 minutes) ( 30 min)
Capturing your screen is an important skill for creating flipped units. Some screen capture tools also record video but come with some related issues which are explored.

7. Screencasting options (3.5 hours)
Many screencasting options for PC, Mac, iPad and Android are explored. Some are covered via detailed tutorials and others by overview articles and/or videos.

8. Video type, compression and sharing (30 minutes) (3o min)
Once participants create some videos they need to be shared. This is where Google Drive, YouTube, Vimeo and etc come to the fore. Additional background information to video file types and video compression is given.

9. Options for delivering your media ​ (1.5 hr)
Once participants have sourced and created some media, it will be time to 'flip' some lessons - in other words, create an online unit of work. This session provides an overview.

10. Tutorials for delivering your media ​(3.5 hours) (3.5 hrs)
There are many options for creating a flipped unit of work and some of the better ones are explored in this session - Google Drive, Open Learning, Weebly, Google Sites, Moodle and others.

11. Implementing your Flipped Mathematics Classroom ​(2 hours) (2 hrs)
Once participants have created their flipped unit they implement it with their students and then report back to the course their implementation experiences.

12. Course Completion (15 min)
The course completion process including accreditation information, a short survey, staying in touch and options for continued access.

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FAQs

Do I need to be confident with technology to cope with this online workshop? 
Regarding the online nature of the course - no. The free online platform (Open Learning) used in this course is very user-friendly. However, given that you will be following tutorials on how to create videos and assemble online content into flipped/blended units you will need to be reasonably confident when learning to use new software/apps and be able to multi-task with your device. 

Various technologies/software are recommended for Mac, PC, iPads, Android and Tablet PCs. (Note: Mathematics teachers interested in this course need to refer to the more specific ‘Flipped Maths Classroom’ course.)  

If you want to use a different online platform, there will be tutorials provided for several platforms.

It says courses commence in March, June, September and December of each year. Can I start at a different time which suits me better? 
Usually, yes. Included on the application form is an option to ‘Start now’. If you choose this option, we will contact you to ascertain the best occurrence to place you in. 

For Southern Hemisphere teachers - the December occurrence enables you to complete most of the content during the Christmas holidays, allowing you to run your implementations during Term One and complete the course by mid-March.

Should we enrol more than one teacher in this online course? 
This course is ideal for individual teachers who want to see significant changes occur in their classroom teaching. However, if you are looking for department-wide change, then the ideal way to achieve this is to enrol all or most of your teachers. 

Why would I need to do this course - there’s so much free information online about how to create flipped/blended learning units? 
It is true there is an enormous amount of freely available information about creating flipped/blended units, and you can certainly learn how to create videos and blended units from searching the web. However, the difficulty of working it out on your own is that ‘You don’t know what you don’t know’. 

On the web, you won’t find someone with 3000+ hours of experience creating videos, online content and online/blended units who is prepared to guide you through this multi-faceted process step by step. Furthermore, the information on the web tends to be ‘one-dimensional’, lacking context. 

For example, many free tutorials sing the praises of various platforms in which to create online units but rarely does the information reference the big issues: User-friendliness and the ability of the platform to create student-centred units based on social learning and collaboration. 

What are some of the big questions that the course addresses? 
  • “What is the ideal screencasting app for me to use given my needs are ‘X and Y’?” 
  • What are examples of the various types of mathematics-instruction videos?
  • “What does a user-friendly online platform look like compared to one that is user-unfriendly?”
    (A vital question as the two are worlds apart!)
  • “Do I need a platform with social learning capabilities?” 
  • “What are the pitfalls of using online platforms that are based on Facebook-like feeds? 

What happens if I don't finish my course within the four months?
This is a self-paced course, with an allocated completion time of 16 weeks. However, as teachers have hectic lives and sometimes things get in the way of completing a course in the allocated time - be assured that if you are keen to complete, we will enable you to do so.  ​

Will I have to be logged in at specific times?
The course is self-paced and accessible 24/7. There is no requirement to be logged in at any specific time.

Example Implementation Reports

A requirement of the course is to create a flipped mathematics unit, implement the unit with students and submit a report on the implementation experience. Below is an example implementation report.

At first, my Top Year 10 class were very concerned about completing a unit online. However, once they found that I had created all of the videos they quickly came round to the idea. The students coped very well to the change in lesson structure and quickly got used to watching the videos at home and working through content in the classroom. 
The students all worked through the unit at very different paces, I tracked student progress by asking them to comment on each subtopic/page once complete. I also helped students by giving them deadlines for each subtopic to ensure they were keeping up with the content. The higher ability students loved the freedom of being able to go ahead and continue with the topic at their own place at the same time the less able students were appreciative of being able to watch the videos multiple times. 
Overall, the flipped classroom experience was relatively easy to get used to for both me and the students. I had much more class time to individually assist students. I really enjoyed delivering the unit in this way, it did take time to develop but I now have the videos to reuse/improve for next year. I will definitely keep on flipping.
Rebecca Shipp, Holy Spirit Catholic College, August 2017

Some video snippets of flipped units created by past participants ... 

Download the course flyer and share with your team

Create and trial a flipped mathematics unit - General flyer

Testimonials

THIS is how online courses should be run. Having detailed, timely, individualised feedback from the course convenor at each step of the course was what gave this course value. The philosophy of 'just having a go' was a strong message and gave me the confidence to try things I might otherwise have put off.​
Rob Alexander,  The King's School, 'Flipped-Maths' course, March 2014
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