Information Technology

Please do not cite without author's permission As a field, education is remarkably susceptible to hype. Spend any amount of time reading recent articles on pedagogy, educational blogs, or popular news stories about education and you will encounter the current crop of buzz words. For several years, the term "flipped classroom" has been near the top of that list. Were you to believe the things written about it-especially in the popular press-it would be easy to imagine that the flipped classroom could singlehandedly cure all our educational ills. As with many trends, the layer of hype actually serves to hide the real value lurking underneath. In this paper I provide a background on the concept of flipped instruction and construct a definition that I believe best captures how the technique operates. I then recount my own experience implementing flipped instruction in three sections of introductory American government.

The Community of Inquiry model has become one of the most common frameworks for designing online and hybrid courses. Substantial literatures have developed around its three ele- ments: cognitive, social, and teaching presence—though the third has proven the most nebulous and hard to define. Much of the discussion about teaching presence focuses on its connection with social presence, emphasizing strategies like video as a way to improve instructor immediacy. By retelling the author’s struggles to teach one particularly challenging course, this paper identifies a neglected aspect of teaching presence—the importance of the instructor as a subject-matter expert. This aspect of teaching presence can be especially important when introducing novice students to advanced or challenging material. It can also be particularly challenging to incorporate into online instruction, where students and professor have minimal to no direct interaction. The paper con- cludes by discussing free online tools that can be used to create interactive learning experiences that leverage instructor expertise.

After a project of this size, an author finds himself deep in emotional and intellectual debt. To Tim Johnson, my advisor, I owe innumerable thanks for inviting me to collaborate on a project about amici, letting me turn that project into my dissertation, and then showing remarkable forbearance as I slowly brought it to completion. I also need to thank the many friends and family who have waited patiently for this moment. My parents in particular have been a source of lifelong encouragement. It is their investment in my education, both financially and by teaching me to value the life of the mind, which bears fruit in this project. I also owe thanks to Steve Hamming, for helping me find the focus and persistence needed to finish this undertaking. My greatest debt, though, is to my wife Kristen. She willingly accompanied me to Minnesota, where we knew no one and had no idea what life would bring. The road since then has not been an easy one, but I am grateful that she is still by my side. More than anyone she has paid the cost of this project's length. I only hope that in time I can repay her in full.