Dan McFarland Flipped Classroom Overview

University: Stanford

Class details: Dan McFarland flipped his 44-person Organizational Theory class at Stanford University in conjunction with the public offering of his MOOC.

Flipped strategies used: group work: Simulations, role play, debates, applications

Out-of-class activities: Students watched pre-recorded lectures and completed case studies before coming to class.

In-class activities: Class typically began with a discussion about the assigned case studies or lecture videos. Students would then participate in group simulations where they would apply organizational theories to different organizational problems. During this group work, McFarland would walk around the class, engage students in discussion, and provide help when needed. Students were also assigned group projects related to work on organizational phenomena. McFarland says that his organizational theory/analysis class allowed him to use Coursera “reflexively” by having students analyze Coursera as a new organization (e.g. exploring the use of the Coursera forums as a way to discuss concepts of “organized anarchy”). Students also participated in a number of peer grading activities for many of the assignments.

Obstacles encountered: McFarland reports that he ran into some issues with students who didn’t have access to updated computers, which “created a ton of issues at the get-go.” In addition, some students complained that the lectures were less personal because they are asynchronous.

Students also had some concerns about McFarland’s teaching the course in conjunction with the public (free) offering of his MOOC. “Students felt as if the degree was somewhat delegitimated,” McFarland explains, “I didn’t properly frame expectations and convince them that [their peers] were a resource.”

Some students also raised issue with the peer assessment activities, explaining that they didn’t think that their peers were legitimate evaluators. As a result, McFarland graded each of his students’ assignments.

McFarland also experienced difficulty getting his students to do the required readings for the course. McFarland expects that this was due to the fact that he made his video lectures “super explicit” for students in his MOOC, who also used the lecture as the “textbook” for the course. Consequently, students in McFarland’s on-campus class felt like they didn’t have to do the readings if they watched the lecture videos

Things to do differently: In the next offering of his course, McFarland plans to have an IT person there on the first day of class to make sure that everyone can access the relevant websites and tools. McFarland also plans to do more “staging and framing of expectations” of his flipped classroom with his students. Specifically, he’ll explain that flipped classrooms and other sorts of interactive experiences have numerous benefits, and that the community of students in a class is a powerful, useful network.

To address student concerns associated with his free MOOC offering, he says that he will “try hard to make students feel very special...because by having your energies divided, its easy to perceive the education as a lesser quality.”

McFarland added that he believes these glitches will get ironed out in subsequent offerings of the course.