Flipping the ECON classroom

I started class with my ECON111 group this morning and I am excited. There are some big plans going in - I am going to try and "flip" the classroom.

This is a familiar term to those of you who are out there reading #edchat #flipped blog posts. The idea is to turn the whole thing on its head:

• I am making short little videos explaining the stuff that I would typically have lectured about. Students can watch these as preparation for the contact session.
• Then they answer a few multiple choice questions before hand, hopefully on their mobile phones, and I have an idea who has prepared and how prepared they are.
• Finally they come to class, but not for a lecture, but for work: working through problem sets, drawing the graphs, discussing the issues.

I have the video for chapter 1 done in Afrikaans and it is on eFundi (our LMS). I want to make English versions as well and will have those up on YouTube. I'll share here.