Fluking....diving right in.

What have I accomplished so far?

• I have been working diligently to make my classrooms more student centered.  This semester I adopted a flipped classroom where literally 80-85% of all the material was flipped, and I was just as uncomfortable as I was when I first started teaching.  Some of the activities went as planned,  some went okay, and some fell short.  Most of the students loved the approach and a few disliked it.  I have adopted a flipped classroom approach for various aspects of the semester before, but never to this extent.  I view the entire experience this semester as a learning process, and I will tweak where tweaking is needed and change up what needs changed/improved.
• As I have stated before - the change from the textbook has not been challenging.  Next semester will be my first "text-free" semester, so it will be interesting to see how the students react to it. 

What challenges have I overcome?

• I will be utilizing an open source textbook next semester, mainly for reference purposes for the student.  We will also be heavily using Moodle, which is a norm for me, and various other open sources. As was stated in an earlier post, I foresee some students having issue with home internet/computer availability.  On the first day of class I plan to conquer those issues by making note of all the places a student may go if they should experience such issues, ex. computer labs, local libraries, etc.  I consider this particular challenge "closed" and conquered.
• Time and sanity issues.  In a previous post - I discussed concerns with finding the time to make this transformation.  But I find that if I set aside just a few hours a week to strictly work on this new adventure in teaching - it is a lot easier to handle.  So far, so good.
• I suppose so far I have not had any major challenges...I am lucky to teach in a discipline that has a treasure trove of fantastic online sources.  

 What remains in order for me to meet my goals?

• Quite honestly, I have areas of the course that I would like to tweak.  Some of the activities we did in class were not as successful as I imagined them to be.  But that's okay.  Some activities did work, and the feedback was very encouraging.  I need to make sure to stay on top of my work to ensure it is completed by the next deadline.