e-Learning Ecologies MOOC’s Updates

Flipped classrooms - potential for the developing world

Ubiquitous learning is the affordance that interests me the most as an entrepreneur in the space of skill development in a country facing a skill-crisis, like India. I'd love to hear your thoughts on our concept: www.xbillionskillslab.com. 

There's two reasons for this -

1. The scope for behavior change: An individual who exists in an ecosystem of learning that is being constantly reinforced (due to its ubiquity) is more likely to change 'habits' as several individuals above have mentioned. The potential of this idea in a country with a massive skill gap (and high connectivity) is incredible.

2. Scale: Ubiquitous learning multiplies access to learning (e.g. people in the food services industry who can't even commit to night-school due to their schedule can - with the right learning aids - self-pace and self-manage to learn). In India, where the education is directly traded against wages for large parts of society, ubiquity affords flexibility, and thus multiplies access to learning.

It is for this reason that I have chosen to define Flipped Classrooms - their utility in developing markets is immense -

The Flipped Classroom is a knowledge architecture. The goal of this knowledge architecture is to allow live classroom time, with peers and teacher, to be spent on creative and 'meta-cognitive' exercises. The Flipped Classroom operates by disseminating important, formative concepts via recorded lectures and/or textual content. This helps save 'live' classroom time for activities that are interactive, and thus help learners fully grasp a concept in a constructivist manner, without creating too much cognitive load on current memory, as learners have taken the effort to familiarize themselves with concepts already.

I think there is value in a Flipped Classroom - as a scalable education model - with the right type of recorded content and the right medium for facilitated discussion after. Moving the teachers role further towards what I think it should be in our times, an knowledgeable facilitator, helping individuals solve problems, and pushing them further,

The key point to be highlighted here is that Flipped Classrooms can never replace a teacher - they can facilitate us to learn better by allowing teaachers to spend more and more time on the quality aspects of education vs. simply disseminating information. In the context of adult learning, I find this especially useful.

In terms of the economics of education, I think this provides a unique opportunity to scale the teacher. Let us say a teacher taught for 40 hours/week. If we make a transition to scheduling those 40 hours for facilitated discussions that help learners grow their understanding of a subject (rather than disseminate instructional/basic information about concepts), then, using that time a much large group of students can be brought to a certain level.

The Flipped Classroom has economic implications that can create access for millions with the right developments. A great example of the Flipped Classroom is a social enterprise in India called Avanti Learning Centres. 

They use technology for the purpose of enhancing learning by minimizing the teacher's role in disseminating instructions. This way they enhance the quality of classroom time, while (due to the limited role of the teacher) allowing the teachers to reach a larger number of students.

Link: https://www.avanti.in/