“What we’re finding is that people don’t know how to employ it,” said Cranford-Wesley, the program coordinator and an information system security instructor at Forsyth Technical Community College. “They don’t know how to integrate that into their classrooms.”
Co-presenting with Forsyth Tech program coordinator and instructor Gerald Kearns, Cranford-Wesley stressed the benefits of a flipped classroom: students are excited, engaged, productive and successful.
“To make it work, you need to have actual hands-on labs and hands-on projects for students to do, but you also want to have modules students can do at home so they’re learning specific concepts outside the classroom,” Cranford-Wesley said.
For his classes, Kearns assigns reading and creates short tutorial videos for students to watch outside of class. “I can tell right away which students have done the reading and which have not, and it only takes a week into the semester for them to understand that if they don’t do the reading, it’s going to be difficult for them to pass the class,” Kearns said.
Designing a Flipped Classroom
Beyond technical skills, the flipped classroom model helps teach complementary skills like collaboration and problem solving. “We believe our students need the technical skills, soft skills and communication skills in this work environment,” Cranford-Wesley said.
About a year ago, the she and Kearns were charged with building a flipped classroom environment that would promote collaborative learning. The previous classroom was a traditional square of computers and desks, with some students facing the instructor while others had their backs turned. “It didn’t inspire students to ask questions, and we felt it didn’t facilitate team learning or team building concepts,” Kearns said. “It did not stimulate collaboration.”
Their new classroom is set up in six-person pods to offer better one-on-one instruction, plus collaboration with students at a nearby pod. They use high-definition monitors to play different kinds of media, and students have screens at their desks, too. In the middle of that project, the school won a grant to do another: A collaborative Mac lab that’s sleek and stylish — and still in progress.
Efficient Use of a Flipped Classroom
Once you’ve established a flipped classroom, what’s the most efficient way to use it? According to the team from Forsyth, it starts with project-based learning and collaborative projects. For his part, Kearns has students work directly with the hardware, building computers from the ground up and then installing an operating system. “Along the way I’m taking notes and giving them suggestions and advice with that,” he said.
Cranford-Wesley asks students to connect with and help local companies with their IT issues. “Students need to leave the classroom, because when they get to the real world, everybody wants them to have experience,” Cranford-Wesley said. In June, Forsyth Tech sent students out to help senior citizens learn to use smartphones. “Now,” she said, “they can put that on their resumes as experiences that they’ve had with work.”
Practical tasks and personalized learning are also important components of a flipped classroom. “You want to create technicians. You want them to be able to do what they claim to be able to do those things when they finish the program,” Cranford-Wesley said. She has students create wireless networks at home as a practical task. “I give them an application so they can go around and see what’s in the neighborhood, who has wireless networks, and to find wireless access points that are open,” she said.
One of her students went so far as to make a flier advertising his services to secure neighborhood wireless networks. “He turned it into an entrepreneurship opportunity. That’s an example of a practical task they can go out and utilize the very next day,” she said.
Personalized learning takes individual training. “If you have students who know what’s going on, you can have some of those students help others,” Kearns said. “And you can have those students move on and start that personalized learning for them.”
Challenges of the Flipped Classroom
Changing over to a flipped classroom model isn’t easy, they agreed. Some students — and some faculty — don’t care for the hands-on learning, and administrators don’t understand the new model. “A lot of times we’re challenged because we have a short timeframe and no professional development,” Cranford-Wesley said. “There are some online trainings you can do, and there’s a lot of free training out there, you just have to pursue it.”
Finding an educational partner like CompTIA can also help, especially when you’re trying to explain the flipped classroom model to administrators. “You have to explain to them what you’re doing and be very detailed about it,” she said. “You can also bring them the research. There’s a lot of research out there.”
Despite the challenges, they both see the flipped classroom as a new, innovative way to connect to students and help them on the journey to being IT professionals.
“A flipped classroom plus partnerships with groups like CompTIA spells success for students,” she said.
Michelle Peterson is a communications specialist for CompTIA.
