Double flip or flip and twist

So the flipped classroom is all the rage. I remember first implementing in 1983 when we built resource centers and had our learners get their instruction on their own (we didn’t have the Web, of course). They would work on content in the resource center and come to our seminars to do something active with it, to build their skills, experiment behaviors, make it social.

How about the double flip? If we say, as some do, that “the flipped classroom inverts traditional teaching methods, delivering instruction online outside of class and moving ‘homework’ into the classroom”, what do we call it when we take it one step further?

First of all, what else can you flip? How about content provision? In the traditional classroom, the teacher or trainer provided the content. The flipped teacher or trainer now publishes it online. But the double flipped provider does it another way: by flipping responsibility for content to the learners.

“Can they do it?” any traditional trainer will ask. But they will be surprised by the answer. “Of course they can.” It’s true, because we’ve flipped something else. In the double flipped classroom (or the “flip and twist” classroom), we’ve made content production a social process. The teachers partner with the learners to produce content that makes sense. And they produce the context for that content, adding perspective, another new concept in education.

And what does that mean “makes sense”? Well, that’s what’s often been missing in education and training. The content makes sense both to the trainer and the learner. They negotiate the meaning by producing something viable together.

That’s why we built Chatscaper. It’s the platform for creating shared meaning and doing it in a coherent context. “Coherence”, “credibility”, “personal impact”, “social meaning” and “context appropriate” become the new criteria of quality replacing “authoritative discourse” as the reference.

A flipping good idea if ever I’ve heard one. Especially if the process is based on the fun that surrounds the creation and playing of games (another flipped principle: the players become the authors).

Any good idea is worth sharing and building on, so let’s share it and build it!