Its a new semester at OTIS College of Art and Design where I teach a class in 3D Visualization. This semester has a brand new teaching structure, thank to inspiration from the Khan Academy educatonal website. They pioneered the ‘flipping the classroom’ two-part teaching strategy.
Part one includes viewing all lectures at home via pre-recorded videos. That way, students can watch at their own pace or even view multiple times if needed. The problem being solved is that live classroom lectures are often the wrong pace for a majority of the class; so students can learn at their own pace wherever they watch (or catch up if they missed a class!) Part two is the classroom, where we will now be doing ‘homework.’ This will function as a lab, where all students will get individualized help on their projects.
The challenge to getting this system in place is that you have to design, write, record, and then edit — many hours of video instruction. Since I have been creating courses at Lynda.com for a few years, I now have four courses online and ready to go! Those four courses total 998 minutes or 16 hours and 38 minutes. I had no idea my mouth was so damn big I was so knowledgeable.
